Coroner ruled shooting was unlawful killing
Lucy Harrison, 23, had graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with first-class honors, secured a job at the retailer Boohoo, and bought a house with her boyfriend, Sam Littler, before traveling to Texas in December 2024 to visit her father, Kris Harrison, who had left the family home when she was two.
Harrison, a telecoms executive originally from Liverpool, had moved to Saudi Arabia for work years earlier and later settled in Prosper, an affluent suburb north of Dallas, where he married and had two younger daughters. He owned a Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol purchased from a colleague for $500 (£370), according to Coates.
On the morning of Jan. 10, 2025, after an argument between Lucy and her father about sexual assault allegations against then-President-elect Donald Trump, Harrison took Lucy’s hand and led her to his bedroom, according to witness accounts. A loud bang followed. Bodycam footage shows Harrison telling officers he had shown his gun to Lucy when “it just went off.”
“When I pulled it out, it went off,” Harrison said on the recording.
Texas authorities did not arrest Harrison. An officer who smelled alcohol on Harrison’s breath did not administer a breath test. Harrison initially denied drinking that day but later told police he had a drinking problem and “keeps it going,” which an officer understood to mean Harrison drinks throughout the day, according to records released to the UK inquest. CCTV footage obtained by police showed Harrison buying two 500ml cartons of wine earlier that day and discarding one outside a shop. He later admitted drinking that morning.
During a police interview, a Texas Ranger explained to Harrison that the “gun would only discharge if the trigger was pressed,” according to a report. Harrison replied “OK,” the report noted. Authorities told Coates they could not prove intent.
The case was presented to a grand jury in Collin County, which decided in June 2025 that Harrison should not be prosecuted. The grand jury’s reasoning and the evidence it reviewed have not been made public.
A Cheshire coroner ruled that Lucy was unlawfully killed.
Coates said she told a Texas Ranger that Harrison must have been pointing the gun at Lucy when he pulled the trigger, to which she said the Ranger agreed, but argued: “We just can’t prove it.” A prosecutor told Coates on a call in March 2025 that the most they could say was that the “muzzle was aligned with Lucy’s chest and a trigger was pulled.”
Littler said that while waiting at the police station to learn whether Lucy had survived, he overheard a muffled conversation between officers in which they referred to the shooting as an “accident.”
“The police just took Kris’s word for it,” Coates said. “The investigation was not rigorous or thorough enough.”
Coates noted that Lucy’s body was tested for alcohol while Harrison was not breathalysed, a disparity she called “absolutely incredulous.”
Coates said the family received no support from British authorities until MP Sarah Hall intervened. The Foreign Office told her it could not assist because no one had been prosecuted.
“At the beginning, nobody was there for us apart from Sarah Hall,” Coates said. “We have got hope that this new cabinet and the foreign secretary will support us, [but] there were no authorities supporting us as British nationals wanting justice for a British citizen who was killed by a British citizen.”
Hall said the family did not receive “adequate support” and called on the government to press Texas authorities to re-examine the case.