“It’s just a tree”: Sycamore Gap suspect baffled by global outrage

One of the men accused of cutting down the iconic Sycamore Gap tree said he could not believe the public outcry around it.

Adam Carruthers, 32, and Daniel Graham, 39, are accused of two counts of criminal damage to the tree and Hadrian’s Wall in September 2023.

Prosecutors say Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Graham drove from Carlisle, Cumbria, overnight to cut down the tree.

The ongoing trial at Newcastle Crown Court heard today how Mr. Carruthers believed the reaction to it was over the top.

Prosecutor Richard Wright KC asked: ‘Did you think, “this is all a bit silly, all this fuss about a tree… worldwide interest about a tree?"’

Mr. Carruthers replied: ‘Yeah, that’s correct.’

Mr. Wright questioned him and said: ‘You couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about? It wasn’t as if anyone had been murdered?’

Mr. Carruthers replied: ‘Yeah, the amount of press coverage and publicity about it. I just thought it was a tree.

An undated handout photo issued by the Crown Prosecution Service shows Adam Carruthers (right) and Daniel Graham working together (Picture: CPS/PA Wire)

‘When it started appearing more and more and more, I was (thinking) “What’s going on here”?’

He was asked why he showed so much interest in the tree the day after it was cut down.

Mr Carruthers 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.’

Mr Carruthers was asked by barrister Andrew Gurney why he and Mr Graham had been texting about it.

He 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.’

Mr Carruthers told jurors he was at home with his partner of 10 years on the night the tree was felled.

He said she had just given birth to their daughter by caesarean section and needed help looking after their two children.

He was asked why he had been texting his partner if they were both home that evening.

Mr Carruthers said she was in the bedroom with the baby and told the court: ‘To save walking in and having a conversation, waking the baby up, it was easier to send her a text message – it was quiet.’

Prosecutors also found a voice note sent to Mr Graham which referred to ‘an operation like we did last night’.

The Sycamore Gap pictured before it was felled in 2023 (Picture: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire)

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.’

Mr Carruthers told the court he had ‘no idea’ who was responsible and that ‘nothing was ever mentioned to him that (Mr Graham) had anything to do with it’.

The court heard that the friendship between the two men had come to an end since the incident.

He said Mr Graham came 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 Carruthers denied he had ‘grassed up’ Mr Graham and also denied he had a fixation on the tree.