Men who cut down Sycamore Gap tree jailed

ODN

The two men who cut down the famous tree at Sycamore Gap out of “sheer bravado” have each been jailed for four years and three months. 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. Report by Gluszczykm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00Well, I think they obviously deserve a harsh sentence, but I'm not sure putting them in prison is the right thing to do.

00:05I just think community service just spending a long, long time planting trees, particularly in weather like this,

00:12is probably, you know, I think a lot of people would feel that was kind of fair justice,

00:16because it's such a mindless act, and I just struggle to understand what went through their minds to do this.

00:22Some people say, well, it's only a tree, but it symbolises a lot more than that.

00:27It's a whole way of looking at the world.

00:31Four years, will they have learnt the lesson? I would have hoped so.

00:33I would have hoped they wouldn't go and vandalise or do anything like that ever again.

00:37So four years is a long time, though, isn't it, just for cutting down a tree?

00:41I think they need more punishment, to be honest, and I'd like to know the reason they've done it for,

00:46because they haven't told anybody, have they yet? So that's the main thing. Why? Why did they do it?

00:51It felt like quite a long time, actually. I guess it reflects public disgust at the Act,

00:56but it feels like a long time for really essentially vandalism.

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