I’ve heard the dad put the lad up to it. He was tired of people walking across his land to take pictures of the tree. Allegedly I don’t have any proof for any of this other than word of mouth. I’ve also read it’s unlikely a 16yo that can’t drive got (what must have been a very large) chainsaw to the tree in the night during stormy weather and cut a tree down in a way that people claim to be more advanced than an amateur tree feller could. Again all conjecture but the comments I’ve seen making these claims went into details on they why’s they thought that and it felt convincing but I don’t know much on the topic. Either way it’s a tragedy, the tree had been there 100’s of years.