The Teller County sheriff on Friday identified the person killed inside a Colorado tourist mine, after its elevator malfunctioned, as a 46-year-old tour guide at the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine.
Sheriff Jason Mikesell said investigators are still working to understand what caused the elevator, which was bringing people 1,000 feet underground to tour an inactive 1890s gold mine, to malfunction, leading to Patrick Weier’s death.
“Currently, we don’t know what happened at 500 feet to cause this. That’s something we are working through,” Mikesell said during a Friday afternoon news conference.
Twenty-three people, half of whom were trapped for six hours underground at the tourist attraction, were rescued Thursday evening.
The mechanical issue involved a problem with the elevator’s doors when it reached 500 feet, the sheriff said.
“At that point, something went wrong. We don’t know what caused that, we don’t know how it happened,” Mikesell said. “All we know is that something occurred at that 500 level.”
Weier, a father, lived in an area of Teller County that is home to fewer than 400 people, county commissioner Dan Williams said Friday. The neighboring town Cripple Creek has about 1,200 residents and Teller County has about 30,000, he said.
“This is a county tragedy; this is a Colorado tragedy,” Williams said, adding that county officials received a call from the White House about the incident.
“With 400 people, this is going to affect everybody. People he went to school with, people he ate with, people he played ball with, plus his child,” Williams said.
Two federal agencies, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, are investigating what caused the elevator to malfunction, leading to Weier’s death, alongside Teller County deputies, Mikesell said.
There was no camera to record what could have happened, he said.
“You’re in a shaft. If you’ve ever seen these elevators, they aren’t very big,” the sheriff said. “About four to six people is about all you can get in it. It’s pretty tight.”
The sheriff said the family who owns the mine has operated tours for years with few safety issues. He said the state has been to the mine to inspect the mine in the past, but was unable to say the last time inspectors conducted an inspection.
“They put thousands of people down this mine for tours and with very, very low safety concerns. But any time you’re dealing with heavy machinery — at a 1,000-feet level, a 500-feet level, in a mine — there could be an accident and this was a tragic accident,” he said, declining to provide more details on the incident.
The last time there was an incident at the mine was more than 40 years ago, Mikesell said.
“We are talking thousands and thousands of people every year go down that mine and back up. Just like a ride at a carnival, some things happen and unfortunately, it happened,” he said.
“We have high hopes it will be back up and running next year.”