The man killed in a Cripple Creek mining accident was a tour guide

The Teller County sheriff on Friday identified the person killed after an elevator malfunctioned at a Colorado tourist mine as a 46-year-old tour guide at the Mollie Kathleen gold mine.

Sheriff Jason Mikesell said investigators were still working to determine what caused the elevator that took people 1,000 feet underground to tour an inactive 1890s gold mine to malfunction, resulting in the death of Patrick Weier .

“At this time we do not know what happened at a depth of 500 feet to cause this. That’s what we’re working on,” Mikesell said during a press conference Friday afternoon.

23 people, half of whom were trapped underground at the tourist attraction for six hours, were rescued on Thursday evening.

The mechanical issue involved a problem with the elevator’s doors as it reached a height of 500 feet, the sheriff said.

“At this point something went wrong. We don’t know what caused this, we don’t know how it happened,” Mikesell said. “All we know is that something happened at the 500 mark.”

Weier, a father, lived in an area of ​​Teller County that has fewer than 400 people, County Commissioner Dan Williams said Friday. The neighboring town of Cripple Creek has about 1,200 residents and Teller County has about 30,000, he said.

“This is a tragedy in the county; “This is a tragedy in Colorado,” Williams said, adding that county officials received a call from the White House about the incident.

“With 400 people, this will affect everyone. People he went to school with, people he ate with, people he played ball with and his child,” Williams said.

Two federal agencies, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, along with Teller County deputies, are investigating what caused the elevator malfunction that led to Weier’s death, 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’re not very big,” the sheriff said. “There are about four to six people in there. It’s pretty tight.”

The sheriff said the family that owns the mine has been hosting tours for years without major safety issues. He said the state had been on site to inspect the mine in the past but could not say when inspectors last conducted an inspection.

“They sent thousands of people into this mine for tours with very, very little safety concerns. But any time you’re dealing with heavy machinery – at 1,000 feet, at 500 feet, in a mine – there could be an accident, and this was a tragic accident,” he said declined to provide further details about the incident.

The last incident at the mine was more than 40 years ago, Mikesell said.

“We’re talking about thousands and thousands of people going in and out of the mine every year. “Just like a carnival ride, some things happen, and unfortunately it happened,” he said.

“We have high hopes that it will be operational again next year.”