In a twist that raises more questions than answers, the two men who were convicted last week of felling the Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall in northern England were also arrested — but not charged — over a series of homophobic attacks that occurred around the same time they took down the iconic tree with a chainsaw.

Grounds worker Daniel Graham, 39, and mechanic Adam Carruthers, 32, were found guilty last week of cutting down the beloved 200-year-old tree on a stormy night in September 2023. The sycamore hugged a dip in the Roman fortification built after Emperor Hadrian’s visit to Britain in A.D. 122.

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The suspected attackers have ranged between ages 13 and 20.

Nine days before the felling, a man reported he was doused with icing sugar and subjected to homophobic verbal abuse by two people at a rest stop frequented by gay men, just 20 miles from the Sycamore Gap in Cumbria, the BBC reports.

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“There was a knock on my window,” said the man, whom the BBC agreed not to identify. “I looked across and there was this black jeep, so I wound my window down and the passenger got quite homophobic with me.”

A bag of icing sugar was then thrown into the man’s car before the jeep was driven off.

The victim said he reported the incident to police the same night, providing a description of the vehicle and his recollection of the registration, or license plate, number. He couldn’t identify any individual involved.

Cumbria Police said the vehicle associated with the registration number hadn’t been in Cumbria that night. Daniel Graham’s black Jeep differed by one letter from the registration number provided by the victim.

Police arrested Graham and Carruthers the next month in connection with the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree. 

In April 2024, the same month they were charged with the crime, an officer from Cumbria Police visited the victim of the homophobic attack following a development in his case.

Two men had been arrested in connection with multiple homophobic attacks, he said, and video evidence had been found on a phone belonging to one of them.

The victim was asked to watch about 10 videos in which various men were victims of homophobic abuse. Some of them also had things thrown into their cars.

The victim identified some of the men, whom he knew, and said of one: “I could see the fear in his eyes. It was quite nasty, and it was all homophobic.”

Cumbria Police confirmed two men were arrested on suspicion of two of the hate assaults, and in December 2024, a case was presented to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) relating to three victims involved in six offenses.

CPS declined to bring charges, however, due to what they called insufficient evidence, difficulties identifying the perpetrators, and too much time having elapsed since the incidents.

In December, the man doused with icing sugar decided to challenge the ruling, a decision which granted him access to the names of those arrested in connection with the attacks: 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 realized who they were.”

Despite the man’s appeal, the initial ruling not to charge Graham and Carruthers in the homophobic attacks was upheld.

The two remain in custody while awaiting sentencing on two charges of criminal damage to the 200-year-old tree and nearly 2000-year-old Roman fortification, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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