LONDON (AP) \u2014 Seven people, including two police officers, were killed early Saturday in a head-on collision in northeast England following a pursuit.<\/p>\n
Cleveland Police said that a Volkswagen Passat carrying five people was traveling the wrong way down the A66 highway near Middlesbrough and collided with a police vehicle on the same road going in the right direction.<\/p>\n
The seven people were pronounced dead at the scene after the crash at 3:39 a.m.<\/p>\n
The two officers were identified as Matthew Blades and Tom Clough, Cleveland Police Chief Constable Victoria Fuller said.<\/p>\n
Police were still working to formally identify other victims. The families of those already identified have been informed and were offered specialist support, police said.<\/p>\n
Cleveland Police were investigating the crash, alongside the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which is always involved when such incidents take place.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said that he was \u201cdevastated\u201d to hear about the loss of life and urged \u201cpeople to avoid speculation at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON (AP) \u2014 Seven people, including two police officers, were killed early Saturday in a head-on collision in northeast England following a pursuit. Cleveland Police said that a Volkswagen Passat carrying five people was traveling the wrong way down the A66 highway near Middlesbrough and collided with a police vehicle on the same road going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":7032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"guid":"5d2e95a0-4d1e-4e95-b8dc-fb724c77a38d","_duplicate_post":false,"rank_math_canonical_url":"","source":"The Associated Press","byline":"","published":"2026-08-22 06:36:56","updated":"2026-08-22 08:30:53","_infotelid":"","_prepressid":"","_multisite_post_sync":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1303,1304],"tags":[],"region":[1279,1280,1320],"class_list":["post-7031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-world","region-british-columbia","region-canada","region-victoria"],"post_modified":"2026-08-22T08:45:09","post_modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T15:45:09","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/inwheels-66e1c21c74819b8addfed30d5e1c7d3ed44cc5227b0e0dc1a7c941306e4615d3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7033,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7031\/revisions\/7033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7031"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inwheels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=7031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}