A British woman visiting her father in Texas was fatally shot in the chest during a heated dispute about President Trump, an inquest heard Tuesday, February 10, 2026, at Cheshire Coroner’s Court.
Lucy Harrison, 23, from Great Sankey in Warrington, died on January 10, 2025, at her father Kris Harrison’s home in Prosper, Texas, after being struck by a Glock 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The shooting happened only minutes before she and her boyfriend, Samuel Littler, were set to leave for the airport.
The inquest heard that Harrison and her father had a “major argument” about President Trump earlier that morning. Trump’s second inauguration was scheduled for 10 days later. The exchange intensified when Lucy, who opposed gun ownership, asked her father: “How would you feel if I were the girl in that situation and I’d been sexually assaulted?”
Kris Harrison responded that he had two other daughters living with him, so it “wouldn’t upset him that much,” according to Littler’s account.
The remark left Lucy “very distressed,” and she ran upstairs. Later, the family appeared to reconcile and shared a meal before her planned departure.
Roughly half an hour before they were meant to head to the airport, Kris Harrison took Lucy’s hand and led her to his ground-floor bedroom. Littler testified that he heard a loud bang about 15 seconds later, followed by Harrison shouting for his wife, Heather.
“I ran into the room and saw Lucy on the floor near the bathroom doorway, and Kris was just shouting incoherently,” Littler told the court.
In a statement read to the court, Kris Harrison said he and Lucy had been watching a news report about gun violence when he mentioned owning a firearm and asked whether she wanted to see it. He said she agreed, and they went to his bedroom, where the gun was stored in a locked box in his bedside drawer.
Harrison had purchased the firearm two years earlier for what he described as a sense of protection for his family. Texas does not require a license for firearms kept for home defense.
“As I picked up the gun to show her, I suddenly heard a loud bang,” Harrison said. “I didn’t understand what had happened. Lucy collapsed immediately.”
He told investigators he could not remember whether his finger was on the trigger when he removed the handgun from its case.
The inquest was told that Harrison had previously undergone treatment for alcohol dependency and admitted he had “briefly relapsed” on the day his daughter died because he was emotional about her departure.
CCTV footage captured Harrison buying two 500ml cartons of Chardonnay from a 7-Eleven shortly before 1 p.m. He drank around 500ml of wine over the next two to three hours. Police officer Luciana Escalera, whose testimony was read to the court, reported smelling alcohol on his breath when she responded to the scene.
Tests showed Lucy Harrison had no alcohol or drugs in her system at the time of her death. Five people were inside the home when police arrived.
The Prosper Police Department initially handled the case as a possible criminally negligent homicide. But a grand jury in Collin County declined to indict Kris Harrison on June 10, 2025 — exactly five months after the incident — issuing a “no-bill” decision.
Jane Coates, Lucy’s mother, said the decision was baffling and impossible to comprehend, adding that it meant no one would be held accountable for her daughter’s death.
Through his attorneys, Kris Harrison released a statement expressing deep sorrow over what had happened.
Harrison did not attend the inquest. His lawyers unsuccessfully sought to have senior coroner Jacqueline Devonish recuse herself, arguing the proceedings had taken on “the tone of a criminal inquiry rather than a fact-finding process.”
Coates described her daughter — a buyer for fashion brand Boohoo and a graduate of Manchester Metropolitan University — as “a tremendous force of life.”
Littler, who met Lucy when they were students at Great Sankey High School, said he was “one of the lucky few who found ‘their person’ at a young age, and I’ll always be grateful for that, even if only for a moment.”
The couple bought their first home nine months before the trip and had hosted their first Christmas together just days before flying to Texas from Heathrow. Lucy had texted her mother that she was packed and getting ready to leave for the airport just 15 minutes before the shooting.
Her funeral took place at St Elphin’s Parish Church in Warrington, England, on February 24, 2025.
