Mum hits out after false claims her son was involved in A66 police chase crash which killed seven
A grieving mum has hit out after false claims that her son was involved in the A66 crash which killed two police officers and five young men in Middlesbrough.
Pc Matthew Blades, 37, and Pc Tom Clough, 38, of Cleveland Police both died when a car on the wrong side on a dual carriageway crashed into their vehicle on the A66 last weekend.
A Volkswagen Passat being pursued by police hit their response vehicle seconds after the chase was terminated in Teesside on Saturday morning (22 August).
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In the collision, five young men also died. They have been identified as Cole Worthy, 17, Theo Rae, 17, Makai Saddington, 18, and 23-year-olds Michael Robert Cahill and Jakub Matusiak.
However the mum of Joshua Kershaw, who tragically died after visiting Thailand on holiday, has been forced to speak out in an emotional post on social media.
In it, she claimed that online users had been commenting under videos of her late son's funeral, held earlier this year, wrongly claiming that he was involved in the A66 crash, despite passing away months before.
Joshua, 21, from Wakefield, had flown out to Bangkok, Thailand, for a week’s holiday on 12 January and had checked into Maxim’s Inn hotel when he stopped replying to phone calls from his mum Jenny.
He had told his family that he was travelling to the southern tourist city of Pattaya for the trip.
But it was revealed Joshua never made it out of Bangkok and two days later, on 14 January, his body was found by shocked maids in the hotel room he was staying in.
Officers attempted to resuscitate Joshua before taking him away. Nobody knew about his whereabouts until a week after his death after they told the British Embassy he was missing in Pattaya where they thought he had travelled to.
It is thought Joshua later discharged himself and is understood to have returned to the busy party strip until 5.45am when he was seen returning to his hotel room, carrying two beers. He was then found dead later that afternoon.
An inquest into his death was opened in the UK in March, which heard tests had been carried out after his body had been returned to the UK.
West Yorkshire Police said they were ‘not involved’ in the decision for the postmortem to take place. Toxicology tests carried out in the UK revealed high levels of heroin and cocaine in his system.
Mum sets record straight in social post
However in an update his mum Jenny has been forced to speak out and state that her son was not involved in the A66 crash, and that videos of his funeral posted online have been mistakenly linked with those of the participants of the Middlesbrough crash.
In a post on Facebook, she penned: "We have seen a number of comments being made underneath Josh’s funeral videos claiming that Josh was one of the people involved in the recent tragedy where two police officers sadly lost their lives.
"Let me make this VERY clear. Josh died in Thailand in January 2026. The A66 crash happened this month, August 2026.
"Josh was not there. Josh was not involved. Josh could not possibly have been one of the people involved. Please don’t be thick and just look at dates on the videos."
In the post, which has had thousands of likes, Jenny continued: "I completely understand that the recent tragedy has brought up anger and emotion for many people, and my heart genuinely goes out to the families of the two officers and everyone else who lost their lives.
"But coming onto videos of Josh’s funeral, where his family and friends are remembering and grieving him, and saying things is disgusting.
"You are talking about someone’s son, grandson, nephew, brother, cousin and friend who lost his life months ago in Thailand.
"You don’t know Josh. You don’t know our family. And you certainly don’t have the right to use his funeral videos to spread completely false accusations about him.
"If you have nothing respectful to say about Josh, please don’t comment at all. We are already living with the pain of losing him.
"We shouldn’t have to come onto his funeral videos and see people making up horrific things about him. Leave Josh out of this. You can clearly see it’s months ago Josh passed and this is recent."
More details revealed after A66 crash
Teesside Coroners’ Court heard on Thursday (27 August) that all occupants of both vehicles involved were pronounced dead at the scene of the incident in Middlesbrough last weekend.
The provisional cause of death was said to be head and neck injuries for Pc Blades, and neck injuries for Pc Clough.
Coroner Paul Appleton said: “At this stage it is understood that there had been a police pursuit of the Volkswagen Passat. It entered the A66 carriageway against the flow of traffic, at which stage the pursuit was aborted.
“A short time after… the Volkswagen Passat collided with a police vehicle, which had not been directly involved in the prior pursuit.”
In the afternoon, inquests were opened into the deaths of the young men in the Passat. In separate hearings, Mr Appleton said that the young men were identified through fingerprint analysis.
The causes of death were said to be neck injuries for Mr Matusiak, head and torso injuries for Mr Cahill, head injuries for Mr Saddington and Mr Rae, and head and chest injuries for Mr Worthy.
Police have arrested 17 people following the A66 crash, charging two of them and bailing the others, as part of investigations into alleged organised crime.
The Passat had been pursued by police following an earlier incident in which a house in the Acklam area of Middlesbrough, linked to Worthy, was rammed by a vehicle.
Police have previously said the five young men in the Passat may have had links to “serious and organised criminal activity” and four of them have previous convictions.
Topics: UK News, World News
James Holt