{"id":748520,"date":"2026-08-24T20:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/748520\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T20:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:24:09","slug":"organised-crime-arrests-as-police-investigate-a66-crash-that-killed-seven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/748520\/","title":{"rendered":"Organised crime arrests as police investigate A66 crash that killed seven"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twelve people have been arrested as part of the investigation into the A66 crash that killed seven people, including two police officers.<\/p>\n

Nine men and three women, aged between 19 and 61, have been arrested across Teesside on suspicion of a range of offences including possession of a firearm and being part of an organised crime group.<\/p>\n

In the early hours of Saturday, a Volkswagen Passat that had been pursued by police travelled the wrong way down the A66 near Middlesbrough and crashed into an oncoming police car – two PCs and all five Passat occupants died.<\/p>\n

Cleveland Police said it was investigating “serious criminal activity that resulted in this fatal incident”.<\/p>\n

PC Tom Clough, 38, and PC Matthew Blades, 37, died in the crash<\/a>, as did Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Jacob Matusiak, 23, Makai Saddington, 18, Theo Rae, 17, and 17-year-old Cole Robert Worthy.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Cleveland Police released more details of its investigation into the lead-up to the crash and information about the 12 people it had arrested.<\/p>\n

The force said:<\/p>\n

It received several reports of two vehicles “being driven dangerously” on Saturday morning<\/p>\n

The first vehicle, believed to be a Volvo XC60, was seen “ramming properties” in the Middlesbrough area<\/p>\n

The second vehicle, a Passat, is believed to have been associated with this activity<\/p>\n

Both vehicles were operating with cloned number plates but were picked up by automated number plate recognition technology<\/p>\n

The Volvo has been recovered in Middlesbrough<\/p>\n

Four of the five people in the Passat had previous convictions<\/a><\/p>\n

Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Fox said the investigation had been “fast moving and complex”.<\/p>\n

He said: “The events of that tragic night will have a lasting and profound impact on the Cleveland area and the communities we seek to protect.<\/p>\n

“We 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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twelve people have been arrested as part of the investigation into the A66 crash that killed seven people,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-748520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}