Sycamore Gap accused could not understand outcry because it was just a tree

One of two former friends on trial for cutting down the famous Sycamore Gap sycamore has said he could not understand the huge outcry after it was felled, telling a court it was “just a tree”.

Adam Carruthers said the reaction to the damage was “almost as if someone had been murdered”.

Prosecutors say ground worker Daniel Graham, 39, and mechanic Carruthers, 32, drove overnight from Carlisle to the Northumberland landmark during Storm Agnes in September 2023, and cut the tree down with a chainsaw.

The pair each deny two counts of criminal damage to the sycamore and to Hadrian’s Wall, which was damaged when the tree fell on it.

Giving evidence on the fifth day of the trial at Newcastle Crown Court on Tuesday, Carruthers was asked why he showed so much interest in the story the day after the tree was cut down.

He said: “On the morning I woke up I had looked online and it was all over Facebook. I was thinking ‘What’s going on here?’. It was everywhere.

“My understanding was it was just a tree, I couldn’t understand why everyone was sharing it, every second post, it was about this tree. I just couldn’t get my head round it.

“The way it was travelling through the news, I was amazed how something so small could create so much publicity.”

Asked by his barrister, Andrew Gurney, why he and Graham had been messaging each other about the story, Carruthers said: “I couldn’t really understand why there was such a major outbreak – it was almost as if someone had been murdered.

“Daniel was a friend of mine at the time. I sent it across, it was everywhere.”

Carruthers said that in September 2023 he was staying with his partner of 10 years in Kirkbride, Cumbria, because she had just given birth to their daughter by Caesarean section and needed help looking after their two children.

He told jurors he was at home with his partner on the night the tree was felled.

Asked why he had been messaging his partner if he was at home, he said she had been in her bedroom with the baby.

“To save walking in and have a conversation, waking the baby up, it was easier to send her a text message – it was quiet,” Carruthers said.

He was asked about a message he sent to his partner that night saying he had a “better video” after she sent him a video of their baby being bottle fed.

He said he had made a video of the roof of their washing shed being damaged in the storm, and was referring to that.

Carruthers was also asked about a voice note he sent to Graham on September 28 2023 referring to “an operation like we did last night”.

He said: “I think it’s been interpreted wrong – it should be ‘launch an operation like what he did last night’. I’m referring to the person who done the job.

“It might sound as if I’m being sexist saying it’s a man, but I wouldn’t have thought it would have been a woman who done it.”

Carruthers said he “had no idea” who was responsible for cutting down the tree and “nothing was ever mentioned to me that (Graham) had anything to do with it”.

Asked why his friendship with Graham ended, Carruthers said his co-accused went to see him at work one night and told him: “I’m going to go my way and you’re going to go yours – I believe you have been grassing on me.”

Mr Gurney asked if Carruthers had “grassed him up” and the defendant said he had not.

He denied ever using a piece of string to measure the tree at Sycamore Gap or asking his co-defendant to take the blame for felling it, as Graham claimed during his evidence.

Asked if he had a fixation about the tree, Carruthers said: “No, not at all.”

In cross-examination, Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, asked Carruthers: “Is that what’s at the heart of this? You thought it was ‘just a tree’, and when the rest of the world didn’t think it was ‘just a tree’ and it was a terrible and wicked thing to have done, you’ve lost your bottle and can’t own up to it?”

Carruthers replied: “That’s not true.”

Chris Knox, defending Graham, asked Carruthers why he told police he had not left Cumbria on the day the Sycamore Gap tree was cut down.

Mr Knox told the court Carruthers had gone on a “reconnoitre” that day and that his phone had been traced to cell sites in the afternoon going from his home in Kirkbride to Carlisle and then as far east as Haydon Bridge in Northumberland.

Carruthers said he and his partner had decided to take their children for a meal at the Metrocentre in Gateshead but turned the car around because their baby would not settle.

He agreed with Mr Wright that that would have been a three-hour round trip

The trial continues.

Published: 06/05/2025 by Radio NewsHub