😱 He Was Already Facing Charges For Assaulting Police — Five Weeks Later, Makai Saddington Died In The A66 Crash That Claimed Seven Lives
Makai Saddington sat in a Teesside magistrates’ court on July 17 facing charges of assaulting a Cleveland Police sergeant and causing racially aggravated alarm or distress to another officer. Five weeks later the 18-year-old was dead, one of five young men killed when their Volkswagen Passat tore the wrong way down the A66 dual carriageway near Middlesbrough and smashed head-on into a police vehicle.
The collision, in the early hours of Saturday, claimed seven lives in total. PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, died alongside Saddington, Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Theo Rae, 17, Cole Robert Worthy, 17, and Jacob Matusiak, 23. The two officers were not part of the pursuit that had been chasing the Passat. That chase had been called off approximately ten seconds before impact. The joyriders’ decision to drive against the flow of traffic nevertheless placed the unmarked response car directly in their path.
Saddington’s pending trial has now become public knowledge, adding a further layer of bitterness to an already devastating sequence of events. The teenager, listed as having no fixed address, was accused of assaulting Sergeant Rooker and of racially aggravated behaviour toward PC Chowdhury. His first court appearance had been adjourned; he never returned for the next hearing. In the months before the crash he had posted a series of TikTok clips that appeared to show him involved in other police chases. One video, set to rap music, captured an Audi speeding through a housing estate with blue lights flashing behind it. Other footage linked to him and his associates showed reckless driving, vehicles on fire, and young men posing in balaclavas.
Those images sit within a wider pattern that has alarmed police forces across Britain and Ireland. A TikTok-driven trend of filming dangerous driving, baiting officers into high-speed pursuits, and posting the results for online attention has already produced multiple fatalities. Six days before the A66 disaster, five teenagers died in County Kildare, Ireland, when their stolen BMW raced the wrong way down the M9 while being pursued. Three sisters and a seven-year-old boy in the car they struck remain in hospital with serious injuries. The Irish teenagers had also been filming themselves. TikTok declined an invitation to appear before an Irish parliamentary committee examining the phenomenon.
On the A66 the consequences were immediate and absolute. The Passat and the police vehicle met at high speed. All seven occupants were killed. Within hours the families of the two officers began the long process of public mourning. PC Clough’s relatives described him as “our hero with a fantastic sense of humour,” a man who “jumped into action whenever needed” and who had “proudly fought for his country.” They thanked the public for an outpouring of support that, by Monday morning, had pushed a Cleveland Police Federation GoFundMe past £200,000.
PC Blades’s widow spoke with quiet force. “No words will ever feel like the right words to honour our Matt,” she said. She called him her beloved husband, her best friend, and the most devoted father to their two young boys. “He was an adored son and brother, a perfect son-in-law, and the most fun uncle. He was loved beyond words by all his family and friends, and his loss has left a space that can never be filled. He gave his life in the line of duty, protecting and serving others with courage, dedication and selflessness. The pain of losing him is beyond words, and our lives will never be the same.”
Cleveland Police Federation issued its own statement: the two officers had left their families that night to serve the community. They did not return. The force and its wider police family have been left to grapple with the sudden absence of two colleagues while managing the practical and emotional aftermath of a multi-fatality collision.
The five young men in the Passat have been named and, in the days since, fragments of their online lives have surfaced. Close friends Theo Rae and Cole Robert Worthy appear together in photographs. Cahill and Matusiak are shown in other images. The TikTok material, however, dominates the emerging picture. Videos of cars careering across estates, spinning onto greens, and racing along footpaths with one hand on the wheel have circulated widely. Captions and music tracks frame the driving as performance. The same platforms that rewarded the content now host the aftermath.
Investigators continue to examine the precise sequence of the pursuit, the decision to abandon it, and the final seconds before impact. Early indications suggest the officers’ vehicle was travelling in the correct direction when the Passat appeared against the traffic. The ten-second gap between the end of the chase and the crash underscores how quickly the situation moved from controlled disengagement to catastrophe.
Public reaction has mixed grief for the officers with anger at the pattern of behaviour that preceded the deaths. The revelation that one of the joyriders was already facing trial for assaulting and racially abusing police officers has intensified that anger. Saddington’s court date in mid-July placed him squarely within the criminal justice system; his death on the A66 removed any chance of that process reaching a conclusion.
The GoFundMe continues to grow. Messages of condolence for the Blades and Clough families arrive from across the country. At the same time, questions about social-media platforms’ responsibility for amplifying dangerous driving challenges remain unresolved. The Irish parliamentary committee that TikTok declined to address is only one of several forums now examining the issue. British police forces have reported similar incidents of young drivers deliberately seeking pursuit for content.
For the widows, children, parents and colleagues of the two officers, those wider debates offer little immediate comfort. Two men who went to work to protect the public will not come home. Two young boys will grow up without their father. A partner will carry the memory of a man described as both hero and humourist. The five teenagers and young men in the Passat leave their own families with a different but equally permanent absence.
The A66 crash is already being discussed alongside the Kildare collision as evidence of a trend that has moved from online spectacle to real-world body counts. Whether platforms, parents, or policing tactics can interrupt that trend is a question that will outlast the immediate mourning. What remains fixed is the human cost recorded in the early hours of Saturday: seven people dead, two of them officers who had no part in the chase that preceded their deaths, and one of the joyriders already known to the courts for offences against the same police service that later recovered his body from the wreckage.