'Moronic mission' to damage tree

TWO friends filmed themselves in a “moronic mission” to cut down the famous Sycamore Gap tree, before keeping a wedge of the trunk as a “trophy” and “revelling” in their infamy when news of the vandalism broke the next day, prosecutors told a jury.

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Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers are accused of driving from Carlisle to the Northumberland beauty spot in the dead of night to chop down the tree with a chainsaw.

Prosecutors say one man cut across the trunk with “expertise and a determined, deliberate approach”, while the other recorded the felling on a mobile phone. They then sent messages to each other the next day about the story going “wild” and “viral”, with prosecutors saying they were “excited” about what they had done.