PHOENIX - Crews hunted through crags and outcroppings of a mountaintop area just east of Phoenix, searching for victims of a fiery plane crash that killed all six people aboard, including the pilot and his three young children.
The family and two other adults were headed for Thanksgiving weekend in southeastern Arizona when the twin-engine plane traveling at 200 mph slammed into a sheer cliff in the mile-high Superstition Mountains an hour after sundown Wednesday, authorities said.
The aircraft exploded in flames, split apart and scattered burning debris.
"No one could have survived that crash," Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Thursday.
The body of one child was recovered and dozens of sheriff's search and rescue personnel worked Thursday to recover the remains of the other victims.
Babeu said he personally notified the mother late Wednesday. The woman, who is divorced from the children's father, is also a pilot.
"This is their entire family it's terrible," Babeu said. "Our hearts go out to the mom and the (families) of all the crash victims. We have has so many people that are working this day, and we just want to support them and embrace them and try to bring closure to this tragedy."
A helicopter search light looks over the scene of an aircraft that crashed in the Superstition Mountains in Apache Junction, on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011.
(Credit: AP)By coincidence, a search and rescue team was in the craggy, jutting mountains searching for three missing teenagers Wednesday evening and saw the explosion, Babeu said. The searchers found the teens, then went up the mountain to try to reach the crash site.
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