Body of grandmother found in Pennsylvania sinkhole after 4 day search

By Kalea Gunderson & Ava Rash

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    UNITY TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania (WTAE) — The 64-year-old woman who fell into a sinkhole in Unity Township has been found dead after 4 days of searching, Westmoreland County coroner Tim Carson confirms.

Officials are expected to hold a news conference this afternoon. WTAE will carry the newser live when it begins.

Friday marked the fourth day into the search for Elizabeth Pollard, who officials say was last seen searching for a missing cat behind Monday’s Union Restaurant on Monday.

The sinkhole where she was discovered was found shortly after she was deemed missing.

On Thursday, Pennsylvania State Police said crews used an excavator to reach the spot in the mine where they believed Pollard would be found.

Trooper Steve Limani said the minds behind the search believed Pollard fell through a thin layer of earth, likely just inches, down 30 feet before breaking through the mine shaft. On Friday, drills were brought in and, from the ground, crews drilled into the ceiling of the mine shaft.

This story will be updated as more information is released.

WEDNESDAY’S EFFORTS

Around 5 p.m. Wednesday, police announced the unfortunate shift in the search for Pollard. The efforts to find the missing woman are now considered a recovery operation, with work going from dusk to dawn and no longer extending through the night.

Limani said it’s unlikely that Pollard was able to survive underground due to extremely low oxygen levels.

“We’re going to dig, and we should be able to get, reach into the area where we believe she has fallen, and there is a complexity of dirt there, and slowly take it out,” Limani said. “These guys are like surgeons, almost. I don’t want to insult a surgeon, but these guys are talented.”

Limani said this is a “fine-tuned extraction.” Each scoop of dirt will be analyzed carefully with the use of K-9s. He explained the investigative protocol once Pollard is found.

“We treat every, every single person that is not alive … Our initial response is, OK, then we get the coroner, and we go through every procedure we would, like you’re investigating a homicide scene. We have zero reason to think this is a homicide scene. Zero. But we always do it the same way, so there’s never a doubt, and we know at the end of the day, we didn’t take any shortcuts,” Limani said.

THE SEARCH AND RECOVERY OPERATION

The sinkhole is located off Marguerite Road in Unity Township, behind Monday’s Union Restaurant. That’s where Elizabeth Pollard was reportedly last seen Monday evening searching for her missing cat. The sinkhole was discovered shortly after she was deemed missing.

Initial efforts to pump oxygen into the mine in hopes of sustaining life, which were used Tuesday and Wednesday, were no longer deemed safe as of Wednesday morning. Officials also determined Wednesday morning they had reached a point where they could no longer safely send rescuers into the mine due to the “fragile” integrity of the mine.

“You’re kind of risking the safety of yourselves and the safety of the others for the potential, and as we keep weighing out the risks and the potential keeps getting lower and lower — it feels like a failure. I’m not going to lie to you,” Limani said Wednesday evening. “But if somebody else gets hurt, I think it would be worse.”

Limani added that their search efforts have not found any sign of life.

“The cameras that we’ve ran through the mine, the different sound devices, we’ve had no signs of any form of life or anything that would help indicate that there was a glimmer of hope to continue to try and push and rush and push the envelope and be aggressive with the potential of risking harm to other people,” Limani said.

Limani said they will continue to pray for Pollard’s family and a miracle.

“We had a tough go of it yesterday and last night. The tough go we were having, there’s nothing compared to what the families had to go through. So, that’s kind of where we’re at. I know that our spirits kind of got sucked out a little bit,” he said Wednesday morning.

The state Bureau of Mine Safety has been on scene throughout the search.

Technology, including specialized cameras, was being used in the search after the decision to pull rescuers out.

“The roof of the mine has collapsed in several stations. It’s unstable. That’s the biggest problem,” said John Bacha, chief of the Pleasant Unity Volunteer Fire Department. “We’ve been continuing to excavate and pull around. The biggest help that we had was a vacuum truck from our local municipal water authority that we were able to remove a lot of that dirt to try to excavate.”

Bacha discussed the disappointing moment of reaching the spot in the sinkhole where Pollard was believed to have fallen but failing to find her.

“We did get where we thought she was at. We’ve been to that spot. What happened at that point, I don’t know. Maybe the slurry of mud pushed her one direction. There are several different seams of that mine, the shafts, that all came together,” Bacha said.

About eight hours after Pollard was last seen, her 5-year-old granddaughter was found in the woman’s car nearby. Officials said the child was found safe after spending a very cold night in the car. Limani said she was found around 3 a.m. Tuesday.

Initial efforts to find Pollard involved using a vacuum truck to suck debris out of the sinkhole and inserting a trench box, which forms a structured shaft adjacent to the hole.

Limani said the trench box extended deep below the surface adjacent to the sinkhole. Crews worked Tuesday night to move dirt underground and tunnel over to the sinkhole in a way that kept crews safe and wouldn’t prolong the search.

“The water being pushed through the mine to help break down the materials so that we can suck it out is causing distress on the integrity, and that distress is actually becoming dangerous for a potential other mine subsidence to take place,” Limani said Wednesday morning.

Limani said a shoe believed to be Pollard’s was found in the sinkhole in the early stages of the search.

“That hole wasn’t there earlier in the day. People were here, they were working. It’s close enough to the building that somebody would have seen it, and everything that the experts that did observe or inspect the hole, it appeared to be newer. So, with that said, we don’t feel a reason that we should be looking elsewhere,” Limani said. “We did take the drones out and do the additional work to try and rule those things out. All the evidence we have pointed towards we are in the right space. It’s also 15 feet, 20 feet from where her vehicle was.”

Construction equipment from a Ligonier company was brought to the search Tuesday.

“The sinkhole, it appears that it was most likely created during the time while, unfortunately, Miss Pollard was walking around,” Limani said. “There is no evidence of any time where that hole would have been here prior to her deciding to walk around looking for her cat.”

“The village of Marguerite, Pleasant, Unity, a lot of little villages around here are old coal patch towns. Very common to find a lot of mines in these areas, obviously a concern to have these mine subsidence issues,” Bacha said.

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