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CANFIELD — An initial report on the Oct. 16 crash that killed Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper Nicholas Cayton indicates the driver of the truck that hit the back of his cruiser was not intoxicated but “distracted.”

The section of the patrol’s report involving distraction does not specify some of the common types of distraction, such as texting or talking on the telephone. It indicates the distraction was “unknown” or “other.”

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

The report 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 as the officer responsible for the report.

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

A news release stated that Cayton, 40, responded to Ohio 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 northbound 2007 Mack Granite, driven by Rach, crashed into the back of the 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 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 Guardsman deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 1,000 people attended his service, many of them fellow police officers.