MONTROSE, Colo. - The 14-year-old son of NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol was presumed dead Monday after a fiery jet crash that killed two crewmen and left the injured executive and another of his sons begging bystanders for help.
The aircraft with six people on board crashed during a snowstorm Sunday while taking off from the airport outside this small town 185 miles southwest of Denver. Federal authorities had no immediate word on the cause of the crash.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene following the crash. Charles Ebersol, the sports executive's 21-year-old son, was screaming for help and saying his brother was still on the plane, according to Doug Percival, a driver at a towing service who was one of the first to arrive.
"Can you please help get him out?'" Ebersol pleaded, according to Percival. The elder Ebersol was sitting on the ground nearby, rocking back and forth.
"You could tell he was in shock. Both of them had been ripped out of their shoes," said Percival.
With light snow falling, crews began picking through the charred pile of twisted metal and a 6-foot-high shard of the fuselage with three gaping, round windows. The two engines lay on the ground nearby near the tail section where they had been mounted.
A backhoe was brought in to help dig through the wreckage, found near a cattle pen in a snow-covered field dotted with knee-high weeds. A white sheet was draped across part of the site as crews wrapped up work for the day.
"It's going to be a while because unfortunately a lot of the wreckage is still covered with snow," said Arnold Scott, the lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.
Ebersol has been head of NBC Sports for nearly 15 years, and is perhaps best known for his love of the Olympics, which are broadcast on the network.
He and his two sons, Charles and Edward, 14, were flying home from California, where the older son's school, Notre Dame, played a football game Saturday against Southern California. Another Ebersol son, 18-year-old Willie, is a freshman at USC.
They flew to Colorado, where they have a home, to drop off Ebersol's wife, Susan Saint James, an actress who starred in the 1980s television series "Kate and Allie." Then, Ebersol and the two sons were headed to drop off Charles at school in South Bend, Ind.
A heavy snowstorm had eased up before the plane prepared to take off, but there was no immediate word if weather was a factor. Steve McLaughlin of MTJ Air Services, which de-ices private planes at the airport, said his company did not de-ice Ebersol's plane before it took off. Airport Manager Scott Brownlee said he did not know whether the plane had been de-iced.
Deputy coroner Matt Eilts said a search had turned up no sign of Edward, a freshman at a Connecticut boarding school.
"We believe at this time that the boy has probably perished within the crash," Eilts said.
Witnesses said it appeared the plane, a CL-602 Challenger, never got off the ground. It ran off the runway and skidded across a two-lane road, punching through fences on either side before bursting into flames.
Percival said he was going to crawl through a hole in the plane to look for survivors but turned around because of billowing smoke. He said leaking jet fuel soon exploded "like Roman candles."
Gary Ellis was teaching Sunday school at a Baptist Church near the airport when he heard a loud "poof."
"It came to a rest, and a moment or two later it exploded into a huge fireball," said Ellis. "It was burning as it came down the runway."
The FAA said the pilot and a flight attendant were killed. The coroner's office identified the victims as Luis Alberto Polanco Espaillat, 50, of the Dominican Republic and Warren T. Richardson III, 36, of Coral Gables, Fla., but did not say which was the pilot.
The co-pilot was hospitalized in Denver, while Dick and Charles Ebersol were hospitalized in Grand Junction. Eilts said the co-pilot was in critical condition.
The plane was registered to Jet Alliance of Millville, N.J. The company offered its condolences but said it had no additional information.
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