Man Dragged From Teen’s Funeral as Fallen Officer Is Buried the Same Day — Police Lock Down Crematorium After A66 Crash Chaos
A 39-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assault after a disturbance interrupted the funeral of Cole Robert Worthy, 17, at Teesside Crematorium on Wednesday, 9 September 2026. Officers arrived at about 12:30 BST, took the man into custody, and allowed the service to resume. A police presence remained around the site until the ceremony ended.
The same day, a full ceremonial funeral was held in Hartlepool for PC Matthew Blades, 37, one of two armed-response officers killed in the same collision. The coincidence of the two services underlined how one early-morning crash on the A66 had torn through two very different circles of grief.
Worthy died in the early hours of 22 August when a Volkswagen Passat travelling the wrong way on the A66 at South Bank, near Middlesbrough, struck a marked Cleveland Police armed-response car. Also killed in the Passat were Theo Rae, 17, Makai Saddington, 18, Michael Robert Cahill, 23, and Jakub Matusiak, 23. PC Blades and his colleague PC Tom Clough, 38, died in the police vehicle. All seven were pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators later said the officers had been looking for the Passat after its cloned plates triggered an automatic number-plate recognition camera. They were not, according to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, engaged in an active pursuit at the moment of impact.
Hours before the crash, a house in Acklam linked to Worthy’s father was rammed. Windows were smashed and bricks scattered across the front. There is no public suggestion that the father was involved in crime. Police have said occupants of the Passat may have had links to organised criminal activity. In the days after the collision, detectives, working with the National Crime Agency, arrested more than a dozen people on suspicion of offences including participation in an organised crime group, firearms and drugs offences.
The funeral arrest did not stop the crematorium service. Cleveland Police said the ceremony continued and that officers stayed nearby to reassure mourners. In Hartlepool, hundreds of officers from forces across the country lined Hutton Avenue as PC Blades’s coffin, draped in the Union Flag and topped with a floral tribute reading “Dad,” was carried into St Joseph’s Church. Blades, a father of two and a former English teacher, had recently begun coaching youth football.
The two funerals on one day made the scale of the loss visible. One community buried a 17-year-old. Another buried a police officer who had been on duty when the Passat came the wrong way down a dual carriageway. The disturbance at the crematorium, and the decision to keep officers on the ground until the last mourners left, showed how raw the aftermath remains.
What the arrested man said in custody has not been released. Until that changes, the public record is limited to the charge under investigation, the time of the incident, and the fact that a funeral already marked by national tragedy was interrupted by violence inside the chapel.
