An investigation is under way into a crash which killed several people following a police pursuit in the early hours of this morning, the UK’s police watchdog said.<\/p>\n
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating the circumstances leading up to a fatal crash involving a police car and a Volkswagen Passat on the A66 in South Bank, near Middlesbrough.<\/p>\n
Officers from Cleveland Police spotted a suspicious vehicle and a pursuit began before the car travelled onto the A66 and collided with a police car at 3.39am, the watchdog said.<\/p>\n
North East Ambulance Service said it had been called to a two-vehicle crash and sent 14 units to the scene including ambulance crews, a specialist paramedic, a hazardous area response team and a doctor from Great North Air Ambulance Service.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the service said: “Sadly, despite the best efforts of everyone attending, a number of patients died at the scene.<\/p>\n
“We send condolences to all of those affected by such a tragic event and thank everyone for all they did to help.”<\/p>\n
Anna Turley, MP for the Redcar constituency where the crash happened, said: “I am deeply saddened to hear of the fatal collision on the A66 this morning.<\/p>\n
“My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of those who have lost their lives, and with everyone affected by this terrible incident.<\/p>\n
“Thank you to all of our emergency services, who have worked through the night responding to this devastating incident.”<\/p>\n
She added: “We would ask everyone to avoid speculating online to respect the families and the police while they do their work at this terrible time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An investigation is under way into a crash which killed several people following a police pursuit in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-601106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}