The body of a teenage boy whose family died in a plane crash in Lake Wales has been recovered, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd confirmed at a news conference Friday afternoon.
The body is believed to be that of 13-year-old Boston Bramlage. Sheriff Judd said positive identification still has to be made.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) officers located the boy's body in a heavily wooded area about 0.4 mile southwest of the site of the main wreckage.
"He was located in very thick underbrush," said Sheriff Judd. “He was not in a chair at all. It was as we expected, he was thrown from the aircraft and as a result landed about 4 tenths of a mile southwest of the main wreckage.”
Witnesses say prior to the crash, they saw the plane flat and rotating and at some point the right wing broke off creating a gaping hole. Investigators believe Boston was likely ejected from the plane through the hole.
“(The boy) was not in the plane when the plane hit the ground,” Judd said.
The bodies of pilot Ronald Bramlage, 45, his wife Rebecca, 43, and three of their four children were located Thursday night in Tiger Creek Swamp area of rural eastern Polk County.
Sheriff Judd confirmed the flight's manifest showed two adults and four children were supposed to be on board the flight. Judd identified the children as Brandon, 15; Boston, 13; Beau, 11 and Roxanne, 8.
As they continued to search for Boston, Judd said,"We are looking for this child as if this was our child out here."
Officials from Kansas State University say the namesake of the school's Bramlage Coliseum arena is named for the victim's father, Fred. Ronald Bramlage was a known philanthropist in the state and his wife was a school board president.
According to Senior Air Safety Investigator Tim Monville, from NTSB, there is still limited information about what led to the crash.
He says what they do know is that at some point, the aircraft was an altitude of 25,100 feet. The pilot had been in contact with Miami Air Traffic Control Center but at some point it was lost from the radar and from radio communication.
Monville said the pilot of another aircraft heard a mayday from the aircraft but the call did not indicate the specific emergency.
A distress beacon signal was heard and the aircraft was located in Lake Wales a short time after that.
There is evidence of structural separation, but, according to Monville, they do not know if the structural seaparation is resultant of another event that preceeded it. Currently, Monville says about 6 feet of the right wing is currently missing.
NTSB investigators say they plan to collect the pieces of the aircraft and reconstruct it at another location as part of their investigation into the cause of the accident.
A witness called 911 after seeing the plane go down Thursday.
The plane went down in an area that is not accessible by ground without specialty vehicles. Crews made their way to the area with four-wheelers and were lowered to the site by a sheriff's office helicopter. "It was immediately clear that there were no survivors of the crash," investigators said. "It is apparent that parts of the aircraft separated before the crash."
Sheriff Judd advises residents in the area not to pick up any of the plane's debris that they may found. He's asking anyone who might find pieces of the plane to note the location of the debris and call the Sheriff's office so they can document the location and recover it.