Overview

• Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, each received four years and three months’ imprisonment for criminal damage to the Sycamore Gap tree and Hadrian’s Wall.
• Judges heard the pair travelled over 40 minutes from Cumbria carrying specialist equipment before felling the landmark in a three-minute chainsaw attack filmed on Graham’s phone.
• Prosecutors secured convictions using ANPR data, mobile phone video and forensic tracking that placed Graham’s Range Rover and their devices at the scene in the early hours of September 28, 2023.
• The defendants’ motives remain unclear, with Carruthers’s lawyer describing the incident as ‘drunken stupidity’ and both men shifting blame onto each other during sentencing remarks.
• The National Trust and local authorities have spent more than £30,000 on debris removal and wall repairs and are propagating replacement saplings from the tree’s seeds.