CANFIELD — The Ohio State Highway Patrol has released an initial crash report on the Oct. 16 crash on state Route 11 that killed Trooper Nicholas Cayton. It indicates that the driver of the truck that hit the back of Cayton’s cruiser was not intoxicated by alcohol or drugs, but was “distracted.”

The section of the report involving distraction does not specify some of the common types of distraction, such as texting or talking on the telephone. It does not specify whether the distraction came from inside the vehicle or outside the vehicle. It indicates that the distraction was “unknown” or “other.”

The report lists the driver of the truck that hit the back of Cayton’s cruiser as Ryan M. Rach, 35, of Canfield, and states the vehicle he was driving was a flat bed truck owned by Quaker City Concrete Products of Leetonia. Rach has no new charges on file in the online county courts database.

At the top of the crash report, it identifies Rach and the vehicle he was driving as being the “unit in error” in the crash. It states that Rach was “changing lanes” as part of the accident. The trooper who completed the report indicated that a contributing circumstance in the crash was Rach “following too close.”

None of the other drivers and their vehicle were listed as having any “contributing circumstance” in the crash. Trooper Steven Tucci, an accident reconstructionist, is listed on the report as the officer responsible for the report.

The information provided in a news release by the state patrol was that Cayton was struck while in his cruiser by a truck on state Route 11 south of U.S. 224 in Canfield and that Cayton was assisting a disabled commercial vehicle at the time of the crash.

A news release stated that Cayton, 40, responded to Route 11 northbound following a report of a disabled 2024 Kenworth semi tractor-trailer in the right lane. Upon making contact with the driver, Nelson De Jesus Herrera Vasquez, 65, of Florida, it was determined that the Kenworth had struck an item in the road.

The release states Cayton was sitting in his cruiser with its emergency overhead lights activated when a 2007 Mack Granite, driven by Rach, 35, traveling northbound, crashed into the back of Cayton’s cruiser.

The cruiser traveled forward into the back of Vasquez’s disabled tractor-trailer, also striking Vasquez, who was standing outside of his vehicle. Cayton was pronounced dead at the scene. Vasquez was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital for treatment. Media accounts have indicated that Vasquez suffered serious injuries.

The diagram showing the location of the vehicles involved in the crash shows Herrera Vasquez next to his truck on the side of the truck closest to the passing lane at the time of the crash.

It shows all of the vehicles in the right lane of the two northbound lanes.

The state patrol crash report contains only a description of the movement of the vehicles, not an account of what any of the witnesses told investigators.

At Cayton’s funeral at Beeghly Center on the campus of Youngstown State University, he was honored by Gov. Mike DeWine and other state officials, as well as people who knew him on a more personal level, for his love of his family and for his service — as a state trooper and as an Ohio National Guardman deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 1,000 people attended his service, many of them fellow police officers.