A Pennsylvania coroner’s office said Friday that investigators believe they have located the body of a woman who was last seen four days earlier near a sinkhole above a shuttered coal mine.
Sean Hribal, a deputy coroner in Westmoreland County, said searchers believe they have found the woman’s remains.
A coroner was dispatched by law enforcement shortly after 11 a.m. local time to Unity Township, where crews have been excavating the abandoned coal mine in an effort to locate Elizabeth Pollard.
Axel Hayes, Pollard’s son, said in a brief phone interview Friday that he had not heard from authorities and planned to call his father, Kenny Pollard, to let him know.
Pollard, 64, was last seen searching for her cat Pepper on Monday evening near a restaurant less than a kilometre from her home. Pollard’s family reported her missing around 1 a.m. on Tuesday as the temperature in the area dropped below freezing.
The search for her focused on a sinkhole with a manhole-sized surface gap that may have only recently opened up in the village of Marguerite, above where coal was mined until about 70 years ago.
Police said they found Pollard’s car parked about six metres from the sinkhole. Pollard’s five-year-old granddaughter was found safe inside the car.
Hunters and restaurant workers who were in the area in the hours before Pollard’s disappearance told police they hadn’t noticed the sinkhole.
State to see whether mine created 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 the grandmother fell into the nine-metre-deep chasm.
Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Neil Shader said the state’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation will examine the scene after the search is over to see if the sinkhole was indeed caused by mine subsidence.
In June, a giant sinkhole in southern Illinois swallowed the centre of a soccer field built on top of a limestone mine, taking down a large light pole and leaving a gaping chasm where squads of kids often play. No one was hurt.
In 2023, a sinkhole that in 2013 fatally swallowed a man sleeping in his house in suburban Tampa, Fla., reopened for a third time, but it was behind fencing and caused no harm to people or property.
