{"id":654358,"date":"2026-08-24T19:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T19:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/654358\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T19:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T19:38:12","slug":"uk-police-arrest-12-people-as-investigation-into-wrong-way-middlesbrough-crash-widens-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/654358\/","title":{"rendered":"UK police arrest 12 people as investigation into wrong-way Middlesbrough crash widens \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twelve people have been arrested on offences including involvement with organised crime by detectives investigating the lead-up to the A66 crash in Middlesbrough<\/a>, northeast England, which killed seven people, including two police officers.<\/p>\n

Four of those arrested were held on suspicion of participating in an organised crime group and four on suspicion of possessing a firearm.<\/p>\n

Four of the suspects are also accused of possessing class A and B drugs with intent to supply.<\/p>\n

Four of the five young men in the car had previous criminal convictions, and were believed to be associated with another car which was seen ramming properties earlier that morning.<\/p>\n

Police said there was no evidence that filming of the activities on Friday night and Saturday morning was \u201cfor the purposes of TikTok\u201d.<\/p>\n

Police officers Matthew Blades (37) and Tom Clough (38), were killed when a Volkswagen Passat \u2013 which had been pursued by police \u2013 was driven the wrong way along a dual carriageway near Middlesbrough and hit their marked armed response vehicle.<\/p>\n

The five people travelling in the Volkswagen \u2013 Cole Robert Worthy (17), Theo Rae (17), Makai Saddington (18), Michael Robert Cahill (23) and Jacob Matusiak (23) \u2013 were pronounced dead at the scene at South Bank, early on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Police said nine men and three women, aged between 19 and 61, have been arrested after an investigation over the weekend into alleged criminal activity before the crash.<\/p>\n

The force said on the morning of the collision, it received several reports of two vehicles being driven dangerously. The first vehicle, believed to be a Volvo XC60, was witnessed ramming properties in the Middlesbrough area. The second vehicle, a Volkswagen Passat, is believed to have been associated with the activities of the Volvo.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Seven people killed after car driven wrong way on dual carriageway in northeast EnglandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Police said both vehicles were operating with cloned number plates but were picked up by automated number plate recognition (ANPR) technology.<\/p>\n

The Volvo XC60 involved in the initial reports has been traced and recovered in Middlesbrough.<\/p>\n

Assistant chief constable Wayne Fox, responsible for the strategic leadership of the investigation, said: \u201cThis has been a fast-moving and complex investigation, with significant links to serious and organised criminal activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to say: \u201cWe have a duty to respond to, and thoroughly investigate, the serious criminal activity that resulted in this fatal incident, and to bring all those responsible to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleveland Police began the chase after receiving intelligence relating to \u201cnumerous incidents\u201d linked to a Passat, which activated an ANPR camera and is believed to have been using cloned plates, investigating watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct said.<\/p>\n

The police officers who died were not involved in the original pursuit, but had been called to the area to assist with the search for the Passat.<\/p>\n

The Passat was pursued by an armed response vehicle for just under seven minutes before the car drove on to the A66 at South Bank against the flow of traffic.<\/p>\n

Police aborted the chase and continued to travel on the correct side of the carriageway.<\/p>\n

The Passat crashed into the car carrying police officers Blades and Clough about 10 seconds after the chase ended. <\/p>\n

The A66 crash came just under a week after five teenagers died in a crash involving a car driving in the wrong direction on the M9 motorway in Co Kildare and colliding with a car containing four people, all of whom were hospitalised with serious injuries.<\/p>\n

\u2013 PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twelve people have been arrested on offences including involvement with organised crime by detectives investigating the lead-up to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,3625,11,12,15,16,5,1150,7,8,1294,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-654358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-kildare","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-tiktok","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-uk","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117152180267636979","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}