Grandmother searching for pet cat outside a restaurant falls 20 feet into abandoned mine and dies: Lawsuit

A pistillate was searching for a favored feline with her granddaughter extracurricular a Pennsylvania edifice erstwhile she fell 20 feet done a sinkhole to her decease successful an abandoned mine, a lawsuit states.

Elizabeth Pollard, 64, died successful the wintertime of 2024 owed to negligence by Monday's Union Restaurant and U.S. Steel, the proprietor of the mine, the ailment from her household members states. They assertion some entities should person known astir the hazardous authorities of the country and guarded against it.

"Defendants knew oregon should person known of the unsafe condition, including the existence, nature, and unreasonable hazard posed by the excavation subsidence opening and the country overlying abandoned underground excavation workings," the suit obtained by Pittsburgh ABC affiliate WTAE reads. "The country wherever [Pollard] fell was a highly susceptible country of illness owed to the years of anterior mining."

On the nighttime of Dec. 2, 2024, Pollard was looking for a mislaid feline with her granddaughter extracurricular Monday's Union Restaurant successful Latrobe, Pennsylvania, a borough immoderate 40 miles eastbound of Pittsburgh.

As the pistillate got retired of her conveyance to search, she reportedly fell into a 20-foot-deep sinkhole successful the crushed that laic supra an abandoned mine. Her assemblage was recovered 4 days aboriginal astir 12 feet from wherever the sinkhole collapsed.

"The Pollard household is looking for answers and accountability," the Pollard family's attorney, Mark Malone, told the section TV station. "They don't privation their wife, their mom, their grandmother's name, successful decease to mean nothing."

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Malone said U.S. Steel operated the excavation until 1953, but "even though that it's closed down, they astir apt inactive ain the mineral rights beneath the restaurant." He added that the suit is not conscionable astir obtaining wealth for damages but preventing thing akin from happening successful the future.

The defendants "were liable for providing harmless parking lots, harmless paths, and a harmless means of question throughout" the premises, the suit adds.

When reached by WTAE for comment, U.S. Steel said it was reviewing the lawsuit. Monday's Union Restaurant did not connection comment.

Pollard's obituary says she near down her husband, 3 sons, her granddaughter, 5 brothers, "and galore nieces and nephews." She "enjoyed angiosperm gardening, crafts and her cats."