Graham implicated another man and Carruthers, who told police he worked as a mechanic and maintained properties, Wright said. But Carruthers denies having anything to do with the vandalism and said he wasn’t at the scene of the crime.
Wright said that the defendants had embarked on a “moronic mission” in an “act of deliberate and mindless criminal damage”.
He said the duo left a trail of evidence and boasted of their feat the following day as news of the tree’s demise travelled around the globe.
Prosecutors said they can’t say which man worked the saw and who filmed the act, but that each was equally culpable.
Both men owned chainsaws, and the two sometimes worked together, Wright said. A video found on Graham’s phone showed them cutting down a large tree about six weeks before the Sycamore Gap incident.
The discovery of the fallen tree quickly made the news the day after it was cut down and reverberated across the UK, causing a national uproar.
Adam Carruthers, 32, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of criminal damage.Credit: AP
“The place is much loved by many thousands of people,” Tony Wilmott, a senior archaeologist with Historic England, said in written testimony presented to the court.
The tree was not Britain’s biggest or oldest, but its majestic canopy, perfectly set in a gap along a stretch of the ancient wall built by Emperor Hadrian in AD 122 to protect the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire, had attracted generations of followers.
The tree became famous after being featured in Kevin Costner’s 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, and was a big draw for tourists, landscape photographers and people snapping selfies for social media.
“Its unmistakable profile has been repeated in many media, and because of this, it has become totemic,” Wilmott said.
“It has become a place of marriage proposals, family visits, and even the location of ashes to be spread.”
AP
#Video #shows #moment #150yearold #tree #chainsawed #Hadrians #Wall
