Two men found guilty of cutting down the "Robin Hood tree" in England
London, May 9 (EFEverde).- Two men have been found guilty by a court in Newcastle (northeast England) of felling the century-old sycamore tree known as the "Robin Hood tree," which stood next to Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland in 2023.
Daniel Graham, 38, and Adam Carruters, 31, were also found guilty of causing criminal damage to both the tree, worth £622,191 (€734,406), and to Hadrian's Wall, built by the Romans, worth £1,144 (€1,350) after it was damaged when the sycamore tree fell on it.
Sycamore Gap, as the tree was named, became famous when it appeared in the 1991 film "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" starring Kevin Costner and had become one of the most photographed in the country.
The prosecutors, who called the culprits an "odd couple" because their friendship led them to do "everything together," maintained that "although the tree had grown for more than a hundred years, the act of damaging it beyond repair was the work of minutes."
The factsGraham and Carruthers drove 50 kilometers in the middle of the night through a storm from their homes in Cumbria, northern England, to Northumberland, where one of them cut down the tree while another filmed it on his phone, according to the account of the incident.
When they were arrested, officers found the video proving their guilt on their phones, as well as messages discussing the logging, which they called "last night's operation," as a "savage" act that was going to go viral.
But when the trial began, 18 months after his arrest, their friendship "collapsed," according to prosecutors, and Graham ended up accusing Carruthers of having brought his SUV and cell phone to the scene that night without his knowledge.
He also claimed he had now turned against his former friend because his business, a mechanic's workshop, was being affected by the logging, which caused shock waves in the UK.
Carruthers, however, denied this, telling the court that he didn't understand the stir the story had caused, claiming that "it was just a tree."
The sentence they face for criminal damage will be announced on July 15, according to British media. EFEverde
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