The search for a woman believed to have fallen in a sinkhole while looking for her missing cat Monday night in Unity Township, Pennsylvania is now a recovery mission, according to police.
Search and rescue teams worked through the night behind Monday’s Union Restaurant Tuesday looking for 64-year-old Elizabeth Pollard, Pennsylvania State Police reported.
Crews could be seen using excavators to dig in the area and vowed to keep searching for the woman until she is found.
In a late afternoon news conference on Wednesday, Tpr. Steve Limani said authorities no longer believe they will find Pollard alive, but that work to find her remains continues.
“We’ve had no signs of any form of life or anything” to make rescuers think they should “continue to try and push and rush and push the envelope, to be aggressive with the potential of risking harm to other people,”
Limani said oxygen levels below ground were insufficient.
“We feel like we failed,” Limani said of the decision to change the status of the effort from a rescue to a recovery. “It’s tough.”
In a previous update, Limani said Pollard was last seen around 5 p.m. on Monday when she went to look for her cat, Pepper, and was reported missing hours later by a family member.
Limani added the woman’s 5-year-old granddaughter was found alone inside the vehicle around 2 a.m. in the freezing temperatures and reunited safely with her family.
While assessing the scene, police said they found a sinkhole, where an old coal mine once was, about 15 to 20 feet from the car.
According to Limani, crews were able to go about 30 feet with a camera that showed what could be a shoe but further recovery required digging.
“It breaks my heart because I know that people want answers and I know the family wants answers and I still, I hold all hope, I, maybe I’m, that’s just how I, you know, until I’m told it can’t happen, I don’t believe in that because, you know, I know the person we’re looking for from what the way it was described to me, she was a go-getter, she was, you know, all in on stuff and not a person that would be a quitter.”