Great-gran's 200-mile trip to Sycamore Gap case

A great-grandmother who travelled more than 200 miles to see the Sycamore Gap vandals sentenced has said justice was not done.

Daniel Michael Graham and Adam Carruthers both from Cumbria, were jailed for four years and three months on Tuesday after filming themselves using a chainsaw to illegally fell the landmark tree by Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland.

Sheila Hillman, 78, and her husband John spent hundreds of pounds travelling from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands to Newcastle Crown Court for the hearing.

"Seeing the tree broke my heart. I was incensed," she said outside court. "I wanted to be here to see justice done but we haven't got it."

The couple stayed at a nearby hotel and said their bill would come to £500, but she felt she needed to be in court to see the judicial process completed.

Mrs Hillman, who grew up on Tyneside, sat on the front row in the public gallery for the day-long hearing.

She said she had been in hospital undergoing a serious operation when the pair were on trial but told her surgeon she intended to be well enough to see them sentenced.

The men were convicted of criminal damage after they drove to the site in darkness in the early hours of 28 September 2023 and cut the iconic tree down.

The judge, Mrs Justice Lambert, said the tree was a landmark of Northumberland and "symbol of the untamed beauty" of the landscape around Hadrian's Wall.

She rejected a claim of "drunken stupidity" and said, while a full motive was not clear, felling the tree and the ensuing outrage gave the men "some sort of thrill".

After the hearing, Mrs Hillman told reporters: "Then they got four years and three months and it's likely they will serve two and a half.

"I don't think it's long enough."

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