MONTROSE, Colo. -- NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol and his college-age son emerged from the wreckage of a chartered jet after the plane crashed while taking off, but the body of his 14-year-old son was found in the wreckage Monday evening.

"We are 99.9 percent sure that it is (the son)," Coroner Mark Young said Monday evening. He said the body matches the general description of Edward "Teddy" Ebersol. An autopsy will be conducted to positively identify the remains.

The boy's seat was found underneath the plane, Young said.

The 18-seat aircraft with six people on board crashed Sunday morning at Montrose Regional Airport in southwest Colorado, not far from the Telluride Ski Area. A heavy snowstorm had eased up before the plane prepared to take off for South Bend, Ind., where Ebersol's son Charles is a senior at the University of Notre Dame, but there was no immediate word if the weather was a factor in the crash.

A witness said the plane slid sideways into a road and the impact ripped the cockpit from the fuselage, and that Charles Ebersol helped his 57-year-old father through the gap.

Eilts and police Cmdr. Gene Lillard said searchers scoured the rugged terrain around the wreckage for five hours Sunday but found no sign of Edward "Teddy" Ebersol. Searchers made their last sweep at about 3 p.m. Sunday, Lillard said.

The pilot and a flight attendant were killed on impact. They were identified as Luis Alberto Polanco, 50, of Espaillat, Dominican Republic and Warren Richardson III, 36, of Coral Gables, Fla..

Video

Deputy Coroner Describes Search For Missing Child Witnesses Describe Crash Site

The co-pilot was hospitalized in critical condition at Denver Health Medical Center, while Dick and Charles Ebersol were hospitalized at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction.

Neither NBC Sports nor St. Mary's released any information on Dick and Charles Ebersol's conditions.

The plane flew from Van Nuys, Calif. and stopped in Montrose to drop off Ebersol's wife, actress Susan Saint James. The Ebersols have a home near the Telluride ski resort. Saint James, who starred in the 1980s television series "Kate and Allie," was not on board.

Kevin Sullivan, NBC Universal's vice president for sports communication, told reporters that Saint James would have "no comment at this time. She requested privacy, and she is at the hospital with Dick and Charlie," Sullivan said.

Eyewitness Chuck Distel said that he was driving on a highway parallel to the runway when he saw the plane skid sideways through a fence and brush. A newspaper reported that the plane had lifted off briefly before crashing.

Distel said Charles helped his father through the front of the plane and that the pair were walking around when Distel and an airport official arrived. He said Ebersol didn't say a word but the younger man cried and yelled "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

"I had to think for a second, 'Who are these people?"' he said. "They weren't severely injured, they were in shock."

Doug Percival, a driver at a local towing service, was one of the first to arrive at the scene 100 yards from the runway. Percival said Charles Ebersol was screaming for help, saying his brother was still on the plane.

"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, who was going to crawl through a hole in the plane to look for Teddy but turned around because of billowing smoke.

He said the two pilots and the flight attendant "were all buckled up and bent in ways they shouldn't be." He said and other bystanders were forced back by leaking jet fuel that exploded "like Roman candles."

Distel said Charles was able to climb into an ambulance, while the elder Ebersol was loaded onto a stretcher.

The wreckage burst into flames, forcing Distel and other rescuers to get away.

Another witness, Gary Ellis, told 7NEWS that the plane appeared to be taxiing for takeoff when it exploded.

"It was huge, it really was. I didn't know how far the flames would erupt, they went mostly up and out but they went basically up in the air and it was a large, large fireball," he said. "In my mind, and just from what I observed and the magnitude of the fireball, I'm terribly surprised anybody could have survived."

A weekend storm that covered most of the state dumped more than 3 feet of snow in the Montrose area and there was light snow and fog at the time of the crash. It was not known if weather was a factor and investigators from the FAA and National Safety Transportation Board were en route to the airport, 185 miles southwest of Denver.

Steve McLaughlin of MTJ Air Services, which deices private planes at the airport, said MTJ did not deice Ebersol's plane before it took off. Airport Manager Scott Brownlee said he did not know whether the plane had been deiced. He said deicing would have been the pilot's decision, but he said at least one commercial jet had deiced before taking off Sunday.

The Montrose airport is one of several that serves Telluride, a popular ski destination for celebrities.

The plane was identified as a CL-601 Challenger, which could hold up to 19 passengers, registered to Jet Alliance of Millville, N.J. The company offered its condolences and its president, Clifford C. Russell, was flying to Colorado Monday afternoon.

Dick Ebersol became NBC's director of late-night programming in 1974 and was executive producer of "Saturday Night Live" in the early 1980s. He became president of NBC Sports in 1989, and is perhaps best known for his love of the Olympics.

He and Saint James have a long history in Telluride, the tiny miner's town-turned-destination resort in a Colorado box canyon. Wendy Brooks, founder of the Telluride Academy, a summer outdoors program for children, said the couple have been longtime contributors. She said their sons attended the academy several summers.

"They've been a very active and integral part of the community for a very long time," Brooks said. "They moved here in the 1980s. Susan built a building and they lived in it, and they started bringing the kids out when they were very young," Brooks said.

"They were totally family-centered despite the celebrity," she added. "Some celebrities in Telluride think of themselves as celebrities. The Ebersols were just one of the gang."