About 200 people, including a group of around 20 masked youths, gathered in Middlesbrough for a balloon release honouring Jacob Matusiak, one of five men who died in a head-on crash on the A66 that also killed two police officers. The event, which featured rockets and orange smoke, has drawn sharp criticism from Express reporter Adam Toms, who described the tribute as a sign that public decency has become "warped and unrecognisable."
Police officers killed in the line of duty
PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, an Iraq War veteran, died at the weekend while on duty protecting the public. The five men in the Vauxhall Passat—Cole Robert Worthy, 17, Theo Rae, 17, Makai Saddington, 18, and 23-year-olds Michael Robert Cahill and Jacob Matusiak—were travelling the wrong way down the A66, reportedly to gain social media likes. Four of the five had accumulated 37 criminal convictions between them.
Toms wrote that the recklessness displayed by the group "would make any sensible person seeth with anger," and argued that the families of the deceased, while entitled to grieve, must understand that the men "brought their deaths upon themselves" and "snuffed out two people rightly hailed as heroes."
Tribute event condemned
The balloon release for Matusiak took place in South Bank, Middlesbrough, and was shared on social media by a former police officer under the handle WasAcop. Toms said the turnout "should terrify us," adding that those who attended "clearly do not care about the law or its selfless servants."
Matusiak's cousin has claimed that "if the police pursuit were called off earlier lives might have been saved." Toms dismissed this, noting that lives would have been saved if the young man had not acted in such a reckless manner, and urged the relatives to mark their deaths "in a dignified way, privately and covertly."
Official responses
Home Office minister Anna Turley paid tribute to the officers earlier today, saying she was asked to do so by Cleveland Police. Retired Derbyshire Police superintendent Kul Mahar told Toms that the deaths "show the ever present risk that police officers face on a daily basis."
Toms concluded that the five men who died instantly should have served prison time for manslaughter, adding, "If only it were possible to put someone on trial from beyond the grave."
