Fundraiser for police officers killed in A66 crash in Middlesbrough tops £1m

A fundraiser for two police officers who were killed in a wrong-way crash has reached more than £1m.

PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough died during the early hours of Saturday when a Volkswagen Passat, going the wrong way on the A66 at South Bank, near Middlesbrough, hit their vehicle. The five young men in the Volkswagen also died.

Among the donations to the police officers’ fundraiser, which was launched by the Cleveland Police Federation, was £4,000 from the Cleveland branch of the National Association of Retired Police Officers.

Its chair Grant Thorburn said the officers’ deaths had “hit home hard” and that seeing the tributes and donations paid to them had been “humbling”.

He said: “Once you’re a police officer, you’re always a police officer, so even after you retire, particularly in Cleveland, it’s such a small, compact force, everyone knows everyone else.”

The Police Federation’s acting deputy national chair Paul Williams said there was “tremendous grief” among Cleveland officers.

“The policing family is deeply scarred by this incident,” he said. “This just brings it home as to how vulnerable we actually are.”

He said police officers were human beings who were your ordinary relatives, friends, parents, partners and colleagues.

The fundraiser will be split equally between the families of the two men to be used as they wish, according to the Cleveland Police Federation.