Cleveland Police Receive £2m Funding Boost After Fatal Crash and House Fire

Cleveland’s police force is to receive a £2m funding boost to tackle serious crime, after the home secretary said successive high-profile tragedies in the Middlesbrough area had led to a “sense of disquiet” in the community.

Shabana Mahmood and the prime minister, Andy Burnham, paid tribute in parliament on Tuesday to police constables Matthew Blades and Tom Clough, who were killed when a Volkswagen Passat travelling on the wrong side of the A66 dual carriageway collided head-on with their marked response vehicle.

Five young men travelling in the Passat, which had earlier been pursued by different police, also died in the 22 August incident.

Cleveland police said the five occupants – Cole Worthy, 17, Theo Rae, 17, Makai Saddington, 18, Michael Robert Cahill, 23, and Jakub Matusiak, 23 – may have had links to “serious organised criminal activity”.

Officers from outside the area have been deployed to Cleveland after the crash.

Mahmood told the House of Commons on Tuesday that she had given her “full backing” to the investigation, making the £2m pledge to fight “both serious crime and its causes”.

The funding is separate to real-term budget increases for all police forces, which will see Cleveland police receive an additional £7m compared with last year, she said.

The home secretary said Cleveland police were also investigating the house fire in Grangetown that killed Natalie McDonald, 34, and her niece Valentina Foster, 7, and injured four others on 26 August.

Investigators were not treating the fire and the A66 crash – which occurred within a mile of each other – as connected, Mahmood said.

“However, it has undoubtedly added to the sense of disquiet in a community already reeling from the earlier tragedy,” she said. “I recognise how unnerving it will have been for law-abiding citizens, both in the affected areas and beyond, to see a spate of incidents occurring in close proximity and quick succession.”

Cleveland police and crime commissioner Matt Storey said the £2m funding boost would help deal with the immediate aftermath of the incidents, but would not address the “chronic underfunding” of the force.

“A one-off payment is not a solution,” Storey said. “It fails to tackle the deep-rooted funding inequalities that continue to disadvantage the hard-working officers, staff and communities of Cleveland.”

Storey said the force needed at least £20m every year to recruit 200 more police officers and strengthen efforts to crack down on serious organised crime.

The funding announcement came after a 23-year-old man appeared in court on murder charges over the deaths of McDonald and Foster.

Jaden Wright, of no fixed address, appeared before Teesside magistrates court on Tuesday for a hearing that lasted less than two minutes.

Wright briefly greeted his solicitor as he was brought into the dock before he was remanded in custody to appear at Teesside crown court on Thursday.

The court clerk outlined that he faces two murder charges, two counts of grievous bodily harm with intent and two charges of attempted grievous bodily harm with intent. The charges relate to the six people who were in the house, two of whom cannot be identified by the media due to their age.

The clerk said Wright faced a separate charge of intentional strangulation over an incident said to have happened on the day before the fire.

Cleveland police said on Friday that a 48-year-old woman was in the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle in a “critical but stable” condition after the fire, and a 27-year-old man was at James Cook university hospital in Middlesbrough receiving treatment. Two teenage girls were discharged after sustaining non-life-threatening injuries.

Katie Smith, the senior investigating officer from Northumbria police, said: “This has been a truly tragic incident and my thoughts remain with the families of all those involved.

“I would like to thank local residents for their support and patience during this complex investigation. Anyone who may still have information, or has any concerns, can still submit information using the major incident public portal.”

Katie Nicholson, the chief crown prosecutor for CPS North East, said: “Our prosecutors have worked closely with Cleveland police to establish that there is sufficient evidence to bring this case to court.

“We remind all concerned that proceedings against the defendant are active and he has the right to a fair trial. It is vital that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information which could in anyway prejudice these proceedings.”

A 31-year-old man who was also arrested in connection with the case was released without charge on Sunday.