A66

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Two police officers killed in a crash on the A66 died from head and neck injuries, an inquest has provisionally concluded.

Cleveland Police officers PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, died on Saturday when their police vehicle was hit by a Volkswagen Passat which was going the wrong way down the dual carriageway near Middlesbrough.

Area Coroner for Teesside and Hartlepool Paul Appleton opened and adjourned their inquests at Teesside Coroner’s Court in short, consecutive hearings.

Further inquests, into the deaths of the five young men in the VW Passat, are expected to open later.

Appleton said both officers died in a fatal road traffic collision on the A66 between Normanby Road and Church Lane in Eston, after their vehicle was in collision with a Volkswagen Passat that was driven “against the flow of traffic”.

He said there had been an “aborted” police pursuit, which both officers were “not directly involved in”.

The inquest was told PC Blades’ provisional cause of death was head and neck injuries, while PC Clough’s provisional cause of death was given as neck injuries.

It was told PC Blades was identified by his wife and PC Clough by his partner.

The coroner said he was waiting on a report on the full post-mortem examinations into the men’s deaths, a report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and a police collision report.

A fundraising appeal set up by the Cleveland Police Federation for the two officers’ families has raised more than £1m.

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A house rammed by a car before the fatal A66 crash in Middlesbrough belonged to the father of a teenager who died in the incident.

Cole Worthy, 17, was one of five young men who died when a Volkswagen Passat travelling in the wrong direction hit a Cleveland Police armed response vehicle, also killing two police officers.

The force said that in the early hours of Saturday, and the previous night, it had received multiple reports of two cars driving dangerously around the town and a Volvo XC60, believed to be linked to the Passat, was seen ramming properties.

There is no suggestion Worthy’s father was involved in criminal activity.

PC Tom Clough, 38, and PC Matthew Blades, 37, died in the crash, as did Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Jacob Matusiak, 23, Makai Saddington, 18, Theo Rae, 17, and Worthy.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct said officers had been pursuing the Passat for almost seven minutes after it was connected to earlier alleged criminal activity, but the pursuit was abandoned 10 seconds before the crash when it turned on to the dual carriageway.

Both vehicles were operating with cloned number plates but were picked up by automated number plate recognition technology.