{"id":189848,"date":"2025-12-13T14:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/189848\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T14:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:22:08","slug":"two-men-arrested-after-christmas-tree-cut-down-hours-after-lights-switch-on-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/189848\/","title":{"rendered":"Two men arrested after Christmas tree cut down hours after lights switch-on | UK News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two men have been arrested after a beloved village Christmas tree was cut down just hours after its lights were switched on.<\/p>\n

The tree had stood in Shotton Colliery, County Durham, for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

It had grown from a sapling into a large tree – so large that the village was planning to replace the lights.<\/p>\n

But it was felled sometime on Wednesday night<\/a>, causing “huge upset”, according to Durham Police.<\/p>\n

St Saviour’s, a local church, posted images of lights on the tree being turned on.<\/p>\n

A message on their Facebook account said: “May the people who caused this be caught and punished by the authorities.”<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Image:
\n The tree had been growing in the village for more than a decade. Pic: Durham Police\/PA <\/p>\n

In an update on Friday afternoon, the local Peterlee policing team said two men have been arrested in connection with the incident.<\/p>\n

“The men, aged 23 and 26, have been taken into police custody where they will be interviewed by officers,” the force said on Facebook.<\/p>\n

The police said they were “in the process of charging and remanding a 26-year-old male with criminal damage to the tree”.<\/p>\n

A 23-year-old has since been released under investigation, the police said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men have been arrested after a beloved village Christmas tree was cut down just hours after its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-189848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}