(Image: NEWSQUEST)
A teenager arrested after the A66 crash that killed two police officers will be sentenced next month after he admitted weapons offences linked to a shooting.
Kai Beattie, 19, pleaded guilty at Teesside Crown Court last month to possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life and possessing a machete.
Beattie’s barrister, Gary Wood, said the teenager admitted being in Grangetown when a gun was fired on July 22 but denied being the shooter.
Judge Francis Laird KC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, heard that Beattie had withdrawn his basis of plea and would be sentenced on the full facts of the prosecution case.
Beattie, of Foxrush Close, Redcar, was remanded in custody until his sentencing on November 20.
Beattie was arrested during police operations after the August 22 crash on the A66 near Middlesbrough, in which seven people died.
PCs Tom Clough and Matthew Blades died when a VW Passat travelling the wrong way along the dual carriageway hit their response car head-on.
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Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Theo Rae, 17, Cole Robert Worthy, 17, Jacob Matusiak, 23, and Makai Saddington, 18, also died in the collision.
By August 29, 24 people had been arrested and three charged in an organised crime crackdown following the A66 crash.
The IOPC said the pursuit lasted just under seven minutes before officers aborted it when the Passat entered the A66 against the traffic; about 10 seconds later, it hit another police vehicle.