The men convicted of chopping down the Sycamore Gap tree in a trial this month were also questioned over a homophobic assault which saw a man doused in icing sugar and verbally abused.
At the end of their trial, Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, were found guilty of cutting down the iconic tree at Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland in September 2023, the felling of which sparked national and international outcry.
The tree, which for around 150 years had grown in a dip on Hadrian’s Wall, was famously featured in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
As revealed by the BBC, nine days before the infamous felling a man was attacked with icing sugar and verbally abused whilst sitting in his vehicle at a layby in Cumbria – which is located around 20 miles from where Sycamore Gap tree stood.
“There was a knock on my window. I looked across and there was this black jeep, so I wound my window down and the passenger got quite homophobic with me,” the man, who remained anonymous, told the broadcaster.
A bag of icing sugar was then thrown into the man’s car before the other vehicle drove off.
The man said he reported the incident to Cumbria Police on the same evening, giving officers details about the car and what he could remember of the registration number. He was, however, unable to identify the people involved in the homophobic assault.
“They knew the date, they knew the type of vehicle it was, but they didn’t do anything,” the victim said of the police force.
Cumbria Police, however, told the BBC checks were carried out using the registration given to them but the vehicle linked to that number plate – which differed to Graham’s car by one letter – was shown to have not been in the county at the time.
Two men were arrested in relation to the incident in April 2024 and an officer visited the victim and asked him to watch several videos which were recovered from one of the men’s phones. The footage, which consisted of “10 to 12” videos, showed a number of men suffering homophobic abuse and having things thrown into their vehicles.
“It was quite nasty, and it was all homophobic”
Commenting on one particular video, which featured a man he knew, the victim said he could “see the fear in his eyes”, adding: “It was quite nasty, and it was all homophobic.”
The case was presented to the Crown Prosecution Service in December but the CPS decided against bringing charges due to the time since one of the incidents and the difficulties in identifying the perpetrators.
The victim who spoke with the BBC said he challenged the CPS’s decision, which meant he had to be told the names of the suspects in the investigation.
In an email seen by the broadcaster, detectives labelled the decision not to charge the men as “disappointing” and named the suspects as Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers.
“I knew the names were in my mind somewhere,” the victim said. “I Googled it and my words were “oh my God”, I realised who they were.”
The decision not to charge them was upheld following the appeal.
Graham and Carruthers are currently on remand awaiting sentencing for cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree.
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