(London) A sixty-year-old man was arrested Friday evening as part of the investigation into the felling of one of the most famous trees in the United Kingdom, announced local police, who had released earlier in the day a 16 year old teenager.
The felling of the Sycamore Gap tree, isolated between two hills in a spectacular landscape in the north of England, has created sadness and anger in the United Kingdom.
This two-hundred-year-old maple tree stood very close to Hadrian’s Wall, erected in Roman times to prevent the invasion of barbarians, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In 2016, it was elected “tree of the year”, and appeared in the cinema in the Robin Hood by Kevin Costner in 1991.
PHOTO OLI SCARFF, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The sad before and after
Northumbria Police, who are investigating this “deliberate act of vandalism”, announced Friday evening that they had arrested a “man in his sixties in connection with the incident”.
A 16-year-old teenager, arrested Thursday and suspected of “damage”, was released Friday morning “pending further investigations”.
“I hope this second arrest demonstrates that we are taking the situation seriously, and our commitment to finding those responsible and bringing them to justice,” responded Rebecca Fenney-Menzies, a Northumbria Police official, quoted in a statement.
Thursday morning, walkers discovered the tree, one of the most photographed in the country, cut clean at the stump, apparently with a chainsaw.
One of the managers of the National Trust, which manages many heritage sites in the United Kingdom, Andrew Poad, assured the BBC that the tree was “in good health” and that it might be possible to regrow it .