"Good Samaritans" killed as they helped at a motorway crash scene have been named.

Wendy Patricia Maddison, 39, and her husband Stephen, 43, from Topcliffe, near Thirsk, died after an articulated lorry ploughed into their Range Rover and a removal lorry on the A1(M) between Dishforth and Boroughbridge on Saturday.

The couple had got out of the Range Rover to help three people in an overturned car which had hit the central reservation.

The driver of the removal lorry was also killed. He too had stopped to help.

The driver of the lorry was arrested and bailed until a later date.

Police named the three passengers in the overturned cars, who were also killed, as York woman Sandra Kay Jennings, 37, from Huntington Road, and her sister and brother-in-law Karen McCutcheon, 39, and Colin McCutcheon, 44, from Aberdeen.

The driver of the removal lorry was David Graham Cooper, 32, from Chester.

Inquests into all six deaths will be opened in Harrogate on Friday and police are still appealing for witnesses.

Police also named an elderly couple who died on Monday when their car hit a vehicle on the B1257 , near Helmsley.

They are Frederick Allan Wootton, 79, and his wife Lilian Winifred, 76, from Stockton-on-Tees.

adam.nichols@ycp.co.uk