Police have been scrambled to multiple incidents across Teesside as escalating violence linked to criminal gangs threatens to spiral out of control.
Middlesbrough and its surrounding area is gripped by a gangland turf war that has claimed nine lives in five days following the deaths of seven people, including two police officers, in a crash on the A66 at the weekend.
Footage shared online shows a number of cars on fire in a field as balloons were released at a memorial event, thought to be for Michael Robert Cahill, 23, who died in the A66 crash.
On Wednesday, Valentina Foster, 7, and her aunt Natalie McDonald, 34, were tragically killed in a house fire in Grangetown, Teesside. Two men have since been arrested on suspicion of murder.
At noon on Thursday, a 39-year-old man was stabbed on the Bankfields estate in Eston, Middlesbrough, only two miles from the scene of the fatal crash. Hours earlier, a house was rammed.
