“He Was Only a Boy”: Cole Worthy’s Mother Defends Her Son as a Town Divides Over His Funeral
On a dual carriageway in the dark, seven lives ended in seconds. In the weeks that followed, a town has struggled to hold two truths at once: that two police officers died doing their duty, and that a 17-year-old boy is also being buried.
Cole Robert Worthy was one of five young men in a Volkswagen Passat that travelled the wrong way along the A66 at South Bank, near Middlesbrough, in the early hours of 22 August 2026. The car struck a marked Cleveland Police armed-response vehicle. Cole, Theo Rae, 17, Makai Saddington, 18, Michael Robert Cahill, 23, and Jacob Matusiak, 23, died at the scene, as did PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38. Inquests later recorded that Cole died of head and chest injuries. Identification of the young men required fingerprint analysis because of the force of the collision.
Police have said a pursuit of the Passat was aborted shortly before it entered the A66 against the flow of traffic. The officers who died had been called to the area to help locate the car; they were not the crew that had been chasing it. In the minutes before the crash, officers were already dealing with reports of dangerous driving involving more than one vehicle. A Volvo XC60 was seen ramming properties. One of those homes belonged to Cole’s father in Acklam. There is no suggestion the father was involved in criminal activity. Those who knew the street said Cole sometimes stayed there.
Four of the five occupants of the Passat had previous convictions. Cole’s record included driving offences, using abusive language, failing to surrender to custody, and assaulting a police officer. Investigators have spoken of possible links between some of those in the car and organised criminal activity. None of that answers the question a mother is asking on the day she says goodbye.
Cole’s funeral was set for noon on 9 September at St Bede’s Chapel, Teesside Crematorium. The service, like those of his friends in the same week, has drawn public anger. Schools closed early for other funerals in the group. A local health centre paused face-to-face appointments for two hours around Cole’s service. Processions and roadside tributes have been called tasteless by some, necessary by others. Online, the language has been harsher: no sympathy, they chose this, do not honour them.
His mother has answered that chorus with a sentence that is both simple and unbearable: the boy is not at fault. It is the language of a parent who will not let a criminal record, a wrong-way journey, or a town’s fury become the whole of her child’s name. She is not asking the public to forget the officers. She is asking them not to turn a funeral into a verdict.
That is the rawest part of this story. A 17-year-old can have made dangerous choices and still be a son. Two officers can have been innocent of the chase that preceded the crash and still be dead because a car came at them on the wrong carriageway. Families on both sides are left with empty chairs. A fundraising appeal for the officers’ families passed £1.2 million. Cole’s family is left defending the right to bury him without being shouted down.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is examining the police response. Criminal investigations into the hours before the crash continue, with multiple arrests already made. Those processes will take months. They will not return anyone who died on the A66.
What remains today is a chapel, a name on an order of service, and a mother insisting that grief is not a crime. Whether the town can hear her without erasing the officers, or honour the officers without erasing the boy, is the question this crash has left hanging over Teesside.
