'Brave' South Shields father and son shopkeepers stopped robbers
The pair entered the shop at about 20:00 GMT on 17 November and demanded money, prosecutor Ian Cook said.The shopkeepers, an adult father and son, were "showing some bravery" when they tackled and "got the better" of the robbers, Mr Cook said.
'Particularly unpleasant'
In statements read to the court, the shop owners said they were now fearful of future robberies and the risk that posed to their younger relatives who regularly worked there.They had also spent a lot of money installing new security measures including a £70 a month panic button alarm system, the court heard.In mitigation, the court heard both men were living in a hostel at the time, were fuelled by drink and were "deeply ashamed" of their actions.Recorder Peter Makepeace KC said it was a "particularly unpleasant" crime which had had an ongoing impact on the victims.He said the shopkeepers had shown "courage" but their fears for their younger workers were understandable.Both Robson and Brown were also made subject to restraining orders banning them from contacting the two victims or going to the shop for 10 years.
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North Wales Chronicle
an hour ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Two men who cut down Sycamore Gap tree jailed for more than four years
Former friends Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, were convicted of criminal damage to the much-loved tree, which had stood for more than 100 years in a fold in the Northumberland landscape. They were also convicted of criminal damage to Hadrian's Wall, caused when the sycamore fell on the ancient monument in September 2023. Newcastle Crown Court heard the two engaged in a 'moronic mission' to cut down the landmark, travelling for more than 40 minutes from their homes in Cumbria, then carrying their equipment across pitch-black moorland during a storm in September 2023. They took a wedge from the tree as a trophy that has never been recovered, and revelled in the media coverage as news of the vandalism caused national and international headlines. On Tuesday Mrs Justice Lambert jailed the pair, saying their motivation was still not clear but a large factor seemed to be 'sheer bravado'. She told the defendants: 'Felling the tree in the middle of the night in a storm gave you some sort of thrill. 'You revelled in the coverage, taking pride in what you have done, knowing you were responsible for the crime so many people were talking about. 'Whether that was the sole explanation for what you did, I do not know, however I know you are both equally culpable.' The judge said that, after admissions they had both made in pre-sentence reports, she could now be sure that Adam Carruthers cut the Sycamore Gap tree down while Daniel Graham drove him there and filmed it on his phone. She told them: 'Adam Carruthers, you told a probation officer you had no idea why you carried out the crime and could offer no explanation. 'You said you had drunk a bottle of whisky after a tough day and everything was a blur. 'Daniel Graham, as during the trial, your main focus seemed to be to heap as much blame as possible on your co-defendant. 'You now accept you were present but blame him for what happened that night.' The judge went on to say: 'You told the probation officer it was (Carruthers') 'dream and his show' and you just went along with it.' Mrs Justice Lambert said: 'Although there may be grains of truth in what you said, I do not accept your explanations are wholly honest or the whole story. 'Adam Carruthers, your account that you had so much to drink that you had no memory of what happened is not plausible. 'The tree felling demonstrated skill and required deliberate and co-ordinated actions by you… It was not the work of someone whose actions were significantly impaired through drink. 'Nor, Daniel Graham, do I accept you just went along with your co-defendant. You filmed the whole event, you took photos of the chainsaw and wedge of trunk in the boot of your Range Rover. 'The next day, you appeared to revel in coverage of your actions in the media. 'This is not the behaviour of someone who is shocked and horrified by what has happened.' The court heard they closely followed coverage of the investigation and saw reports of other people, including a teenage boy, being arrested, all while knowing they knew they were responsible. Andrew Poad, a National Trust manager, gave a victim impact statement which was read in court saying: 'This iconic tree can never be replaced. 'Whilst the National Trust has cared for it on behalf of the nation, it belonged to the people. It was totemic.' Mr Poad said an email address set up within days of the felling for people to share thoughts received 600 responses in a month. One said: 'My husband proposed to me at Sycamore Gap under its leafy shelter. A few years ago after lockdown we took our children to see and walk the same section of the wall. 'I'm so glad we got to share such a beautiful and special spot with them before it was gone.' The court was shown pictures of the new Sycamore Gap Celebration Room at The Sill site in Northumberland, and some comments left by people on a board and in the visitors' book. One said: 'Nature at its best over 300 years, humanity at its worst over one night.' Andrew Gurney, for Adam Carruthers, said his client had finally offered a motive for chopping down the tree and 'wishes to cleanse his conscience of what he has done'. He said: 'People want to know why? Why did you conduct this mindless act? 'Unfortunately, it is no more than drunken stupidity. 'He felled that tree and it is something he will regret for the rest of his life. There's no better explanation than that.' Chris Knox, defending Graham, said: 'He is a troubled man who has had very real difficulties in his life, which have not all been of his own making.' His home, and the business he operated from it, were attacked after he was remanded in custody, including having windows broken, the barrister said. The tree was a symbol of Northumberland, was the site of countless family visits and featured in the Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman film Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. Its destruction, filmed on a mobile phone, took less than three minutes. The defendants were once close friends but have fallen out since their arrests, with Graham turning on Carruthers and claiming he had taken his car and phone without his permission on the night the tree was cut down. Graham's Range Rover was picked up on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras between Carlisle and Sycamore Gap at night on September 27 2023, and returning early the next morning. His mobile was traced to phone masts making the same journey. When police arrested the duo and searched Graham's phone, they found a two minute and 41-second video which showed the sycamore being cut down at 12.30am on September 28, and had been sent to Carruthers. Messages and voice notes between Graham and Carruthers the next day showed them talking about the story going 'wild' and 'viral'. Graham claimed Carruthers had a fascination with the sycamore, saying he had described it as 'the most famous tree in the world' and spoken of wanting to cut it down, even keeping a piece of string in his workshop that he had used to measure its circumference. Carruthers denied this and told the court he could not understand the outcry over the story, saying it was 'just a tree'.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Sycamore Gap ‘morons' sentenced to four years for felling tree
Two men who illegally felled the Sycamore Gap tree have been sentenced to four years and three months in prison. Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, had tried to blame each other for what the prosecution described as an act of 'mindless vandalism' on the night of September 27, 2023. The former friends were each found guilty in May of two charges of criminal damage — to the tree and to Hadrian's Wall, the Unesco heritage site which the sycamore had fallen onto — after a two-week trial at Newcastle crown court. Police found a video on Graham's phone which appeared to show the moment the men took a chainsaw to the tree, as well as a series of voice notes they exchanged the next day boasting about their handiwork. The men's relationship soured when they saw the scale of public outrage and realised they 'weren't the big men they thought they were', Richard Wright KC told the jury. He described the felling of the tree at trial as a 'moronic mission'. The men were remanded into custody after the guilty verdict by the judge, Mrs Justice Lambert, in part for their 'own protection'. The court heard that since being convicted both men had accepted their role in the tree's felling. Andrew Gurney, defending Carruthers, said his client wanted to 'cleanse the burden on his conscience' but insisted the vandalism was no more than an act of 'drunken stupidity'. Wright disagreed, saying it had taken a 'high degree of planning' and that 'the court can be sure they were sober and prepared'. He said the harm they caused was at the highest level of criminal damage, with one of the aggravating factors being the site's heritage status and the defendants' attempts to avoid detection. Wright said they were aware that other people, including a young boy, had been arrested in connection with the offence during the police investigation 'when they knew they were responsible'. Justice Lambert said the two men were 'equally culpable' for the act, which Carruthers had carried out, while Graham filmed. She rejected the idea that Carruthers was too drunk to remember what had happened, as well as Graham's attempts to 'heap as much blame as possible' on his co-defendant. She said: 'I am confident that a major factor in your offending was sheer bravado — felling a tree in the middle of the night and in the middle of a storm gave you some kind of thrill. As did the media coverage of your crimes over the following days. You revelled in the coverage, taking evident pride in what you had done.'ᐧ The court was also told the felling of the tree had caused 'serious distress' in the form of financial and emotional harm. In a victim impact statement Andrew Poad, the National Trust's general manager for the site, said the 'iconic' sycamore's destruction now dominated the work of the trust in the area. He said the financial burden was impossible to calculate but the removal of the tree and repairs had cost just over £30,000, with a further £20,000 allocated to ongoing work. • The Times view: Sycamore Gap vandalism is hard to fathom Carruthers, a mechanic, had no previous convictions, arrests, reprimands or warnings. The court was told Graham had two convictions for battery in 2007 and 2016 and two public order offences in 2021 and 2022. Wright said the offences were 'relationship-based' and none resulted in a prison offence. Graham had also received a caution for theft. Chris Knox, defending him, said his client, a groundworker, was a 'troubled man' who had 'very real difficulties in his life, which have not all been of his own making'. Northumbria police explained how the tree's tenacity may have spared the pair a longer spell behind bars. After the sycamore was cut down, its stump was fenced off and after a few weeks green shoots started to spring from it. A campaign was launched to make sure it lived on by growing 49 saplings from its seeds — each one representing a foot in height of the original sycamore. As the tree was therefore not technically dead, Graham and Carruthers could not be charged with its destruction. Instead they were accused of criminally damaging the tree, a less serious form of vandalism. Detective Inspector Calum Meikle — a forester's son whose arboreal knowledge landed him the job of leading the manhunt — suggested the case could prompt Britain to re-examine the way trees are valued. 'I think this whole incident will raise further legislation because trees aren't afforded the same protection that an ancient monument gets,' he said. 'So whilst Hadrian's Wall is an ancient monument, the tree itself wasn't.' Meikle revealed that a tip-off from someone close to Graham and Carruthers put police on their trail within a fortnight of the tree being cut down. The informant knew the men had taken the wedge cut from the sycamore as a souvenir and were planning to keep it as a trophy. Police arrested the suspects after tracking CCTV of Graham's car making its way towards the national park that night. The breakthrough moment came after Graham was arrested and his mobile phone examined. A video was found, with images too dark to make out, but featuring the sound of a chainsaw. The clip was then sent to forensic imaging experts who were able to enhance the footage. The outline of the tree that emerged was unmistakable. Mary Creagh, the nature minister, said justice had been done 'but it will not bring this majestic tree back'. 'Once a historic tree is felled, it is lost forever, and I share people's anger at this shocking act of environmental vandalism,' she said, adding that the government was 'considering how to give greater protections to trees of historic importance'.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
It's not ‘just a tree': The Sycamore Gap vandals got what they deserved
So, vandals Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers have been jailed at Newcastle Crown Court for more than four years for criminal damage after their 'moronic mission' to chop down the beloved Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian's Wall two years ago. I'll go out on a limb, here: it's exactly what they deserved. The tree, which was a striking symbol of Northumberland, a touchstone of British tourism and even featured in the Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, was chopped down in just three minutes in the early hours of 28 September, 2023 – and recorded on the perpetrators' mobile phones. Carruthers' lawyer told the court his client had done it in a moment of 'no more than drunken stupidity' and said it was 'something he will regret for rest of his life'. I'll say. So will we. That's because the wanton destruction of the ancient 150-year-old sycamore was more than 'just' the desecration of a living, breathing thing (and that would, of course, have been enough). It shocked us all – even those who, like me, had never had the chance to see the famous tree in the flesh – and prompted an outpouring of very real, very impassioned public grief from everyone from celebrities to politicians, environmentalists to campaigners and nature charities. Commentators, artists and tourists alike shared poignant anecdotes: of scattering the ashes of loved ones at its roots, of taking multiple generations to visit and marvel at its splendour, of marking memorable moments – weddings, funerals, birthdays – beneath its boughs. Some talked of a near-religious experience, gazing up into its vast canopy. Since its destruction, sculptor Charlie Whinney has created a place for people to sit beside and touch a section of the much-loved tree. As for why the loss of the tree made such a dent on our collective consciousness, I can only hazard that it was partly, at least, because it was a piece of history; a hallmark of our cultural landscape. But I also think it is more than that. And it's something entirely unique and specific to British woodland. Recently, on my local neighbourhood WhatsApp group, someone posted a picture of an over-zealous council decision to chop down a French Tamarisk tree on a public pavement. Immediately, people sent broken heart emojis, a virtual outpouring of tears and shocked faces. Older locals started sharing their memories of the tree that had been there since their childhoods: 'I feel really sad,' one said. 'I remember that blossom tree from when I was a little girl'; and others said they were already in the process of emailing the council, councillors and the local MP. It also galvanised suspicion: 'I saw them doing it and thought they were pruning,' one person reported. 'I asked them why they chopped the blossom tree down by our back gate and they told me it was dead, which it clearly wasn't'; allegations of wrongdoing: 'I smell corruption!' one neighbour said. 'Human – not the trees!'; and an element of vigilante protectionism: 'We need to photograph the ones on the estate to protect them too! It is my understanding that due to the size of the trunk and this being a conservation area, a planning application should have been submitted to remove the tree, so we should check on the planning portal to see if this was done.' But, why? What is the significance of the Sycamore Gap (and of British trees more widely) – and why does felling stoke such fierce and emotional reaction? According to Colin Tudge, author of The Secret Life of Trees, there are lessons to be learned from our own reactions to the Sycamore Gap. And he hopes now that some good can come of this senseless act of violence. 'Maybe its destruction will serve as a pivotal moment, when people born and brought up in this ultra-materialist, ultra-competitive, exclusively anthropocentric age finally undergo the mind shift that's needed if we, humanity, are ever going to save what's left of the natural world – and live in harmony with our fellow creatures,' he said. 'If we changed our attitude then we, humanity, could realistically be looking forward to the next million years, for starters.' Tudge believes that the climate crisis can provide us with a stark framework to consider what is most important to us in the natural world. 'That we are now staring Armageddon in the face is not only tragic – it is absurd,' he says. 'We can learn much of what we need to know from trees – far more and of far greater profundity than we ever can from politicians and their thinktanks of lawyers and financiers who set the tone of modern society and run our lives. 'We can learn first of all that we are not the only creatures that matter – we're only one of an estimated eight million species, of which for all our efforts over thousands of years we have so far recorded less than a quarter, and we should not presume to strive for 'dominion' over the rest as we were enjoined to do in Genesis (1:26). 'More: we can learn that although all individuals matter – as we feel when one that we love is destroyed – no individual, whether human or arboreal, truly exists (or can be said to be real) in isolation. John Donne's observation that 'No man is an island' is true of all creatures, and indeed of everything.' Tudge points out that ecologists tell us that each and every apparently individual creature is an ecosystem in its own right. 'Our own guts and outer surfaces harbour trillions of microbes that are essential for sound nutrition and general wellbeing,' he says. 'Each of us is a walking ecosystem. And every tree that is not drenched in pesticide harbours scores or thousands of different species of invertebrates, which in turn are food for many more creatures of all kinds.' And for those who don't understand that trees are in constant 'conversation' with each other: 'All trees form symbiotic relationships with many kinds of mycorrhizal fungi in their roots whose hyphae spread far and wide, and increase their range and versatility,' he said. 'Together, the fungal threads form a network of indefinite extent that brings all the trees of all species in a wood into communion with all the others. 'So they share water and nutrients – and also, crucially, share information. Each is aware of the plight of the others. Overall, indeed, the more we observe the natural world the more we see that nature as a whole is essentially both cooperative and communicative. Perhaps this once magnificent tree, reduced overnight to lumber, might become a symbol of a new enlightenment.'
