A British woman who was shot dead by her father while visiting his home in Texas was unlawfully killed, a coroner has ruled.
Lucy Harrison, from Warrington in Cheshire, was shot in the chest on 10 January 2025 in Prosper, near Dallas.
Police in the town investigated the 23-year-old’s death as possible manslaughter, but no criminal case was brought against Kris Harrison after a grand jury in Collin County declined to indict him.
Family members were in tears during the hearing at Cheshire Coroner’s Court as Coroner Jacqueline Devonish announced that she found Lucy Harrison died due to unlawful killing on the grounds of gross negligence manslaughter.
The coroner said: “To shoot her through the chest whilst she was standing would have required him to have been pointing the gun at his daughter, without checking for bullets, and pulling the trigger.
“I find these actions to be reckless.”
‘Deep shock’
Speaking after the hearing, Lucy Harrison’s mother Jane Coates said: “Today’s outcome has finally given Lucy her voice back after what has been an unrelenting year of deep shock, grief and fight – fight with quiet focus and steely determination to allow Lucy to speak her truth with the only voice she has now.
“While we recognise an unlawful killing outcome has been decided in a coroner’s court and not a criminal court, we welcome the coroner’s conclusion and thank her for exploring all the evidence fairly and as fully as she could and fearlessly for Lucy.”
The inquest heard the father, described by the coroner as a functioning alcoholic, claimed the gun had gone off accidentally.
Lucy Harrison’s boyfriend Sam Littler, who had travelled with her to the US, had earlier told the hearing she had become upset after she and her father argued about Donald Trump, who was due to be inaugurated as president later that month.
Littler said about half an hour before they were expected to leave for the airport, Kris Harrison took his daughter by the hand and led her from the kitchen to his ground-floor bedroom, where he kept a Glock semi-automatic handgun in his bedside cabinet.
The father did not attend the two-day hearing but, in a statement, said he had bought the weapon to give his family a “sense of security” and that, as it was for home defence, Texas law meant he did not need a licence.
He claimed he had a conversation about guns with his daughter, and she asked to see the gun, having never discussed his gun ownership with him before.
But the inquest heard evidence from others that Lucy Harrison, a fashion buyer for the Boohoo clothes retailer, knew her father had a weapon in the home and disagreed with it.
In the statement, Kris Harrison, who admitted drinking wine earlier in the day, said: “As I lifted the gun to show her I suddenly heard a loud bang. I did not understand what had happened. Lucy immediately fell.”
He told police who attended the scene: “We got it out to have a look and just as I picked it up it just went off.”
The inquest heard a grand jury in the US had determined there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in connection with Lucy Harrison’s death.
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