Missing grandmother Elizabeth Pollard ‘plunged 30 feet into sinkhole’ and died while searching for beloved cat Pepper
The remains of a grandma who went missing and was thought to have fallen down a sinkhole while looking for her cherished pet cat has been located.
The search for 64-year-old Elizabeth Pollard was concentrated on a long-abandoned coal mine.
After leaving in her car to look for her missing cat, Pepper, and reporting her missing on Tuesday morning, her family last saw her on Monday.
The abandoned mine was too unstable for them to continue conducting a safe subterranean search, according to earlier warnings from Unity Township, Pennsylvania, authorities.
According to state police, her body was discovered on Friday, according to Pittsburgh’s NBC affiliate WPXI.
According to Pennsylvania State Police, the search has changed from a rescue to a recovery effort as of Wednesday.
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Two hours after she was reported missing, Pollard’s automobile and her five-year-old granddaughter were discovered 15 to 20 feet from her vehicle.
Despite overnight temperatures dropping to below-freezing, her grandchild remained uninjured.
In the community of Marguerite, about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, emergency personnel focused their search on a recently developed sinkhole that was about 30 feet deep.
Crews had been excavating in the vicinity, but they claimed they had to alter their strategy since the mine structure was so fragile.
Earlier in the week, Pleasant Unity Fire Chief John Bacha stated, “I don’t know what happened at that point, maybe the slurry of mud pushed her in one direction.”
“There were several different seams of that mine, shafts that all came together where this happened at.”
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At the location, search dogs were employed in conjunction with cameras and electronic gadgets.
After being lowered down the pit, a pole camera equipped with a sensitive listening device picked up nothing.
Trooper Steve Limani of the Pennsylvania State Police said another camera captured what might have been a shoe about 30 feet below the surface.
Trooper Limani told Channel 11 following Friday’s devastating discovery that he was glad crews had located Pollard’s remains so her family could now have closure.
Because of subsidence brought on by coal mining, which stopped in the 1950s, sinkholes are widespread in the region.
On the evening of Monday, December 2, Pollard went out at around 5 p.m. to look for her beloved pet cat, Pepper, and was last seen by her family.
Temperatures would have been far below freezing at that time.
When she hadn’t returned, her family alerted the police at around one in the morning on Tuesday.
Before her body was discovered, Pollard’s son, Axel Hayes, described his mother as “a great person overall, a great mother,” adding that she was a catlover who had owned ten dogs.
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“Every cat that she’s ever come in contact with, she has a close bond with them,” he stated.
He went on to say that although his mother had been employed at Walmart for many years, she had not had a job recently.
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