'Moronic mission' to fell tree ends in guilty verdicts

TWO men have been found guilty of carrying out a “moronic mission” to chop down the “most famous tree in the world”.

- ROB KENNEDY Court Reporter

For more than a century, the Sycamore Gap tree had stood next to Hadrian's Wall, in Northumberland National Park and had attracted visitors from around the world. Then along came Cumbrian friends Adam Carruthers, 32, and Daniel Graham, 39, one taking a chainsaw to it while the other filmed the senseless act. And within minutes, the beauty and history of the tree lay in ruins.

The tree which had sat proudly in that much-photographed dip for so long now lay dead, damaging Hadrian's Wall as it was cruelly felled.

Their idiotic actions had been caught on the video camera of Graham's phone in haunting and shocking footage which, when enhanced, showed a figure at the base of the tree amid a loud and unmistakable soundtrack of a chainsaw, followed by the sound of the tree creaking and falling.