It seems obvious that the sudden gush of water was the direct cause of the engine stopping, and a collapsed plastic radiator full of pressurised water would surely fully explain the description of water running out.
(I once had a waterpump seal fail without warning. The temperature rose very rapidly, there were clouds of steam, and the entire coolant poured out in a steaming puddle)
The most common cause of immediate failure to restart after the engine has been sprayed with hot coolant is water in the electrics. Presumably the distributor cap has been dried out.
The worry is that overheating had caused more serious damage, but a sudden collapse of the radiator and loss of coolant while sitting at the side of the road wouldn't do that, suggesting either that the loss had been ongoing and that prolonged overheating had not been noticed, or that there had been some other progressive deterioration, eg poor compression, leaking head gasket, gumming piston rings, etc, and that the water incident was merely the final straw for an already-ailing engine.
I don't see why even an engine with poor compression or a failed head gasket wouldn't make at least some attempt to fire, suggesting something else has failed. When you cleaned and dried the HT wiring, you did put the leads back on the right plugs ?
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