“There was no engine failure.”
I see a loss of thrust. It has been pointed out that the fact that the landing gear was still extended on impact points to possible recognition by the crew of a problem almost immediately after take-off that interrupted retraction of the gear, which should have been well underway at 1,200 feet, according to some claimed expert comments.
I see a loss of lift. That is different than a loss of thrust.
First rule of flying after Vr/V2 — achieve & maintain stable flight; all else is secondary. After achieving a ground speed of 80 knots up to Vr, the only reason for rejecting the takeoff is a condition that affects flight safety, ie, engine out, fire, etc.
Based on published reports that the load shift was communicated to the flight deck soon after rotation, the Captain/PIC would take command of the a/c and become the PF. The PF’s job would be to stabilize the flight, which is incredibly difficult to do when the aircraft is rotating beyond the ability of your flight control surface (elevator aka horizontal stabilizer aka hstab aka stab) to counter.
The gear position, master caution, EGPWS alarms, etc. are all irrelevant until controlled flight has been reestablished. Simply put, if the aircraft isn’t flying, then you’re likely dead, no matter what alarms are ringing or what the gear or flap settings are.
Best guess at what happened in the cockpit is that the PF pushed the yoke forward when the aircraft rotated past the point where he commanded it to stop. When that failed to arrest the pitch up rotation, he likely hit the TO/GA button to get max thrust (assuming a de-rated takeoff) and pushed the yoke into the firewall.
In any case, airspeed bled off pretty quickly, then the left wing stalled. He managed to level the aircraft, but then the right wing stalled and the ship yawed to the right. At this point, the aircraft was doomed. They were below flying speed — it was simply falling with a bit of forward momentum. The nose drops a bit during the yaw, followed by wings level, but this isn’t an indication that the aircraft is flying — just that enough air was moving over the wings during the short descent that the ailerons were able to function.
As another poster stated; they had neither the speed, altitude or thrust (collectively, the energy state) to recover from the stall before impact.