Wrong-Way Massacre on the A66: Reckless Videos, a Son’s Criminal Past — and Officers’ Families Demanding What Happened in the Final 10 Seconds
In the early hours of 22 August 2026, a Volkswagen Passat travelling the wrong way along the A66 dual carriageway at South Bank, near Middlesbrough, smashed head-on into a marked Cleveland Police armed response vehicle. All seven people in the two cars died at the scene. The officers were PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38. The five in the Passat were Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Jakub Matusiak, 23, Makai Saddington, 18, Theo Rae, 17, and Cole Robert Worthy, 17.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct later established that officers had pursued the Passat for just under seven minutes after it was linked to earlier incidents and after cloned number plates triggered an automatic number plate recognition camera. When the car turned onto the A66 against the flow of traffic, the chase was aborted. About ten seconds later, at 03:39 BST, the Passat struck the officers’ vehicle. That police car had been travelling in the correct direction and was in the area to help search for the suspect vehicle; it was not the car that had been conducting the pursuit.
What happened immediately before those ten seconds is now the focus of grief, anger and official inquiry. Police had already received reports of two vehicles being driven dangerously around Teesside. A Volvo XC60 was seen ramming properties. One of those addresses belonged to the father of Cole Worthy. There is no public evidence that the father himself was involved in crime. Shortly afterwards the Passat was on the road. Investigators have said they are treating the movements of the two cars as linked.
Four of the five young men in the Passat had previous convictions. Those records included assaults on police officers, driving without a licence or insurance, theft, racially aggravated harassment and possession of a weapon. Videos that circulated after the crash showed high-speed driving, police evasion and other reckless behaviour associated with some of the group. Relatives of at least one of the dead have acknowledged that he “was no saint” while still asking whether the pursuit should have been ended earlier and whether the full sequence of events has been laid out.
The families of the two officers have described them as heroes and have asked for a complete account of the minutes before impact. Inquests opened at Teesside Coroner’s Court have recorded provisional causes of death as catastrophic head, neck and torso injuries. A wider criminal investigation has led to multiple arrests on suspicion of offences including participation in an organised crime group and possession of a firearm. Cleveland Police has said it is examining the serious criminal activity that preceded the collision.
The A66 crash therefore sits at the junction of several hard facts: a wrong-way impact at speed, a chase that was called off seconds too late to change the outcome, a cluster of prior convictions, circulating footage of dangerous driving, and an alleged street feud that began with a rammed house. None of those facts, on their own, explains every decision taken in the dark. That is why the officers’ families, the coroner and the police watchdog are still pressing for a single, verified timeline of the last minutes — not rumour, not viral clips, and not a partial story told by those closest to the young men who died.
