UPDATE | Victims identified in I-76 crash

June 29, 2017 at 7:39p.m.

NORTH JACKSON

Orrin Hill, retired Jackson Township police chief, was working in his yard Thursday morning when he heard an explosion coming from Interstate 76.

“It was just one big boom,” he said, adding: “There was just tons of black smoke coming out of there.”

Hill was first on the scene to discover a chain-reaction collision on I-76 westbound in a construction zone near the state Route 45 overpass.

Mark Schaas of New Castle, Pa., was killed in the late-morning crash, which also left four other people injured, three of them seriously, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said.

Lt. Jerad Sutton, commander of the Canfield post of the highway patrol, said one of the three tractor-trailer drivers failed to yield for traffic that was stopped in front of him because of the construction.

Robert Brock of Saratoga Springs, Utah, was traveling west in his tractor-trailer when he failed to stop and hit the rear of another tractor-trailer driven by Kevin Roberts of Fort Wayne, Ind., the patrol said.

The impact of Roberts’ tractor-trailer forced the car Schaas was driving into the back of another tractor-trailer, and Brock’s tractor-trailer caught fire.

There were two passenger vehicles involved, one of which was a van that got wedged under the trailer of a semi. A vehicle driven by Guy Garner of Paterson, N.J., struck the cab of Roberts’ truck.

Roberts and a passenger in Schaas’ car, William Lawrence, also of New Castle, were taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital with severe injuries.

Stephen Cole of Apple Creek, Ohio, the driver of the truck Schaas was forced into, also was taken to St. Elizabeth.

Late Thursday, Lawrence and Block were in fair condition at the hospital; Roberts was in critical condition. Cole was not on the list of patients.