Police constables Matthew Blades, 37, and Tom Clough, 38, were killed on Saturday when their police vehicle was hit by vehicle travelling in the wrong direction along a motorway. The five occupants of the other vehicle also died in the crash.
Crime gangs are leaving residents in fear in a town where two police officers and five youths died after a car chase.
Community leaders in Middlesbrough in England’s North Yorkshire, told the Telegraph that balaclava-clad gangs of joyriding youths had become “normal”, with locals on deprived housing estates no longer
reporting crimes for fear of retribution from masked criminals.
Police have made 17 arrests after the fatal head-on crash on the A66 on Saturday that killed constables Tom Clough, 38, and Matthew Blades, 37.
Five joyriders – Michael Cahill, 23, Jacob Matusiak, 23, Makai Saddington, 18, Theo Rae, 17, and Cole Worthy, 17 – were also killed in the collision. Their car was on the wrong side of the motorway when the crash happened.
It emerged on Tuesday that a house where Worthy’s father lived was rammed by a Volvo SUV in an alleged gang feud shortly before the youths started driving through the town at high speed in a Volkswagen Passat.
The dead youths were known locally as petty criminals who drove dangerously, according to community leaders.
One councillor, who declined to be named for fear of retributive attacks, told the Telegraph that areas of Middlesbrough were blighted by crime and antisocial behaviour.
The councillor said: “We have joyriding, drug dealing, off-road motorbikes, shoplifting, the effects of drug users, bricks being thrown at passing cars, houses being rammed by cars … There has been a spike in the last few months, and it involves children as young as eight.
“Middlesbrough has lost control. People here have become used to criminality being normal.”
Graham Wilson, an independent councillor for Brambles and Thorntree, said locals were “too scared to do anything” about crime that involved postcode-based drug-dealing groups fighting over territory in the town.
“We do suffer from antisocial behaviour … It’s quad bikes and motorbikes tearing through the town.
“I think people are too scared to do anything about the crime. … I think the justice system in this country is non-existent. If you had a better justice system, I don’t think you’d have had half the antisocial behaviour we’ve got now.”
On Monday, masked youths riding quad bikes and off-road motorbikes released balloons, blared horns and set off flares in memory of Matusiak in South Bank, near where the crash happened.
The sky was filled with smoke, while balaclava-clad youths rode scooters, off-road bikes and quad bikes around the field.
