Elizabeth Pollard dead: Body of 64 year old Union Township, Pennsylvania woman who fell through 30 ft sinkhole looking for missing cat found. How rescuers were able to locate the missing woman’s remains.
At one point it became apparent that it was no longer a rescue mission but a recovery mission …. The body of missing 64 year old Union Township, Pennsylvania woman was recovered Friday, four days after she went missing while searching for her cat, a state police spokesperson said Friday.
The body of 64-year-old Elizabeth Pollard was being taken to the Westmoreland County Coroner’s Office for an autopsy according to Trooper Steve Limani.
The announcement came on the fourth day of the search for Pollard, who had last been seen Monday evening, looking for the cat near a restaurant half a mile (0.8 kilometers) from her home in the village of Marguerite. The missing Union Township woman was believed to have fallen through a 30 foot sinkhole which used to exist above a former mine.
It is believed Pollard fell through a thin layer of earth, likely just inches, 30 feet below before breaking through the mine shaft.
On Thursday, Pennsylvania State Police said crews used an excavator to reach the spot in the mine where they believed Pollard would be found, just underneath the sinkhole she had fallen through.
On Friday, drills were brought in and, from the ground, crews drilled into the ceiling of the mine shaft. It was there that the missing woman’s body was found, just on 11 a.m, WTAE reported.
Around 1:45 p.m. on Friday, crews began work filling in the massive hole which was created during the search for Pollard.
Pollard’s family reported her missing around 1 a.m. Tuesday as the temperature in the area dropped below freezing after the 64 year old and her 5 year old granddaughter failed to re-appear.
A search found the granddaughter safe and sleeping in the grandmother’s car, but no sign of Pollard.
Race against time to save 64 year old grandmother
The focus of a search for the missing grandmother focused on a sinkhole found 20 feet (6 meters) from the parked vehicle, with investigators surmizing the missing 64 year old had fallen through the sinkhole while looking for the missing cat.
Investigators said that the sinkhole which began as a manhole-sized gap behind ‘Monday’s Union Restaurant’, may have only recently opened above where coal was mined until about 70 years ago.
Hunters and restaurant workers who were in the area in the hours before Pollard’s disappearance told police they hadn’t noticed the sinkhole.
The effort to find Pollard included lowering a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole, although it detected nothing.
Crews removed a massive amount of soil and rock to try to reach the area where they believed she fell into the chasm about 30 feet (9 meters) deep.
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.
Come Wednesday, 5p.m, police announced the unfortunate shift in the search for Pollard. The efforts to find the missing 64 year old woman were now considered a recovery operation, with work going from dusk to dawn and no longer extending through the night.
Trooper Steve Limani at the time said it was unlikely that Pollard would be able to survive underground due to extremely low oxygen levels. Come Friday early afternoon, Pollard’s body was recovered.
Pollard grew up in Jeanette, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from Unity Township, where she lived for much of her adult life.
She previously worked at Walmart and was married for more than 40 years.
