Twelve arrested after fatal crash kills two police officers

Twelve people have been arrested in connection with a devastating crash on the A66 near Middlesbrough that killed two police officers and five young men early on Saturday, August 22. Cleveland Police announced the arrests on Monday, August 24, as part of a wide-scale investigation into the serious and organised criminal activity believed to have preceded the fatal collision.

The crash occurred at approximately 3:39 a.m. in South Bank when a Volkswagen Passat, travelling the wrong way down the dual carriageway, collided head-on with a marked armed response vehicle. The officers in the police car, PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, were killed. The five occupants of the Passat, Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Jacob Matusiak, 23, Makai Saddington, 18, Theo Rae, 17, and Cole Robert Worthy, 17, were also pronounced dead at the scene.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) stated that the collision followed a police pursuit of the Passat, which had been flagged by automated number plate recognition technology for suspected cloned plates. The pursuit lasted just under seven minutes before officers abandoned it as the vehicle entered the A66 against the flow of traffic....