The ‘bully’ and the ‘silly man with silly ideas’: How Sycamore Gap fellers brought shame on tight-knit communities
Throughout the edge of Hadrian’s wall, Kirkandrews and Grinsdale are the last stops for hikers and cyclists before the urban expansion of Carlisle.
No pub or shop. There are two village halls. Now someone closed was once a popular dance hall and was used by the local young farmer club. The other is a single -storey brick building, regular coffee mornings and in the afternoon. In the past, there was a railway with a station, but in the 1960s, an unprofitable line was closed.
And if the villages with a united population of approximately 600 people had cut the iconic sycamore tree tree on the night of September 28, 2023, it would not be noticed to a large extent.
Dan Graham was a well -known tasting for the neighbors who would see that he often driving a horse trap or wandering around the territorial company Lorry.
The local Parish Council claimed that even the public was threatened by a long planning dispute on the allegation of a permanent sitting in the village by the “dominant and oppressive behavior of the inhabitants.
But they still couldn’t believe what the 39 -year -old child would do.
In addition to his former best friend Adam Carruthers, Graham went to diving on the wall of Hadrian during a storm, where the planewood tree was once stopped and was born with a saw.
Nobody knows which of the couple is doing this or who has taken it on a mobile phone.
But it doesn’t matter – both vandal disgraced the communities they lived.
“This embarrassing,” a neighbor said Independent. “One of your neighborhoods can do something very disgusting, embarrassing and sad for everyone living here. He was a tyrant, a difficult person, but to do it?”
Graham, outside the entrance gates often detecting cars of the locals, the local police were not foreign. It turned out that they had convictions for violence and battery between 2007-2016 and between 2021 and 2022 for crimes in public order.
He also had a warning to steal the stumps where he was born with a saw.
After the village, it was the criminal activity that fueled the rumors around the village and Graham’s tree surgery work, which shows that he was responsible for
Two weeks later, the Northumbria police held a “intelligence series” at the dawn of the officers at home.
“In a few days, people said it was it,” the neighbor said. “It was to wait for him to be caught, and when he was sentenced at the hearing, he had a sense of relaxation, and there was also a shame on his connection in the region.”
“But nobody knows why he’s doing it, right? We heard it was a bet. Either he lost a bet or made a bet to cut the tree. The problem will not really know, right?”
At the punishment hearing on Tuesday, Graham and Carruthers have now accepted responsibility, but they are still unknown why they do it. A betting proposal contributes to the list of undated theories, including Carruthers, who want a trophy of the tree as a gift for his newborn child.
During the two -week hearing, Graham described himself as a man a man without a friend .. He said he lived a quiet life, that he only saw the common criminal Carruthers and On-off girlfriend outside of work.
At the funeral of his father, with his family, he brought him closer to Carruthers, who helped him correct his father’s Land Rover defender for the ceremony.
On a track of Graham’s house on a track of less than half miles, a woman who lives with her family and children in a caravan said: “He was the type that hid himself in that garden, we didn’t really see it too much.”
More recently, he said that his family was a “zoom” with Graham, after telling the environmental authorities that they had polluted the river passing over the passing of the passing. “He was digging in the field and pointing his finger to us,” he said.
“Like everyone else here, we were really shocked,” he added.
In addition, a neighboring detectives remember Graham when he first came to arrest and search for his compound. They discovered the assemblies, but they could not find the machine that cut into the sycamore gap or when they returned from the crime.
“He was a ruffid, so when wasn’t it a surprise? [we] They heard the evidence ..
“Nobody really knows him. You will see that you have put him in the minibus and you will hear the developments in the garden that he shouldn’t. But nobody went to talk to him. Why should they do it?”
Graham told the jury that he and Carruthers “hit each other” before establishing a close relationship. However, in the summer of 2024, his friendships were swinging under the pressure of evidence given to them by the police.
Later, in August, Graham left a bomb when he called for 101 police for 10 minutes and fixed the crime to his friend. “One of the children, Carruthers, held the saw,” he said.
By turning the screw further, Graham released a picture of Carruthers on Facebook.
However, Carruthers never accused Graham directly even when he gave evidence in court despite his finger sign without a joint accusation.
For Carruthers, unlike Graham, the neighbors of his parents in Wigton, the town of Wigton, a 45 -minute drive from Graham’s house, were shocked to find their 32 -year -old participation.
A neighbor said that he was a kaman stupid man with stupid ideas ,, but when the case went to court, he accepted his surprise.
The neighbor said: “He loved his cars, he was a repairman. He was going well at some point. He had a job in the factory [Innovia Films]But then he was caught while making a car on a day that should be. He was really an ordinary young man. “
In a bar in Wigton, he said he knew a drinker Carruthers because he did his Mot on the vehicle twice. “He’s not a bad guy,” he said. “It was pushed by the other, the man was good.”
Carruthers lived in a Ramshackle garden in an old fuel tank next to the shelf Kirkbride airport during Sycamore Gap Falling with his wife. Cars and machines pass around the gate compound in which dogs protect the entrance.
His partner Amy Connor gave birth less than two weeks before the tree went down.
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It was the case of prosecution at the hearing, Carruthers prevented the wedge tree as a gift for the newborn. Graham claimed that Carruthers were “admiration iyle with the tree while giving evidence.
In Carruthers’ workshop, he claimed to have a length of lengths that the tree measures the environment and held for emotional reasons.
What used saw, tree wedge or rope length never found.
Like the motive questions behind the criminal damage, the information about where the items are, seems to be locked with the couple sentenced to four years and three months of imprisonment, because many of them continue to mourn the loss of the plane cavity tree.
