'Stigma will stay with them for the rest of their lives'

THE stigma of cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree will stay with the culprits far longer than the sentence handed to them at court.

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That's the view of the detective who brought Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers to justice for felling the iconic landmark.

The Cumbrian pair have been jailed for four years and three months, but Det Insp Calum Meikle, who led the investigation into their crimes for Northumbria Police, said their lives had already changed forever. He said: "It would be fair to say that none of us really predicted just how big this was to become. But I don't think that they fully understood.