A British woman was shot dead by her father in Texas after the two argued about U.S. President Donald Trump.
Lucy Harrison, 23, from Warrington in Cheshire, was shot in the chest on January 10, 2025, at her father’s home in Prosper, 35 miles north of Dallas.
Her death was being investigated as possible manslaughter, but no criminal case has been brought against her father, Kris Harrison. A grand jury in Collin County declined to indict him; it is unclear as to why no charges were brought against him.
Highlights
- A British woman, Lucy Harrison, 23, was fatally shot by her father in Texas after a heated argument about Donald Trump.
- The shooting occurred at the father's home in Prosper, Texas, and is being investigated as possible manslaughter.
- A grand jury in Collin County declined to indict Kris Harrison, the father, and no criminal charges were filed.
- The argument involved a sensitive hypothetical about sexual assault, revealing deep family tensions influenced by Trump-related views.
A grand jury declined to indict a father after he possibly shot his daughter
Image credits: Facebook
An inquest into Harrison’s death was opened at Cheshire Coroner’s Court, where her boyfriend Sam Littler—who was also traveling to the States with Harrison—said the father-daughter duo had a “big argument” regarding Trump.
This was around the time Trump was preparing to start his second term in office. Littler recalled that Harrison would often be distraught by her father when he spoke about owning a gun.
The Court also noted that Kris Harrison moved to the United States when Lucy Harrison was a child, and had previously been to rehab for alcohol addiction. He admitted that he had drunk three glasses of wine on the day of the shooting, BBC reported.
Image credits: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The argument took place when Lucy Harrison presented her father with an unspecified hypothetical scenario regarding a woman who had been sexually assaulted.
“How would you feel if I was the girl in that situation and I’d been sexually assaulted?” she asked her father, Littler noted. The boyfriend noted that the father said it wouldn’t upset him that much because he had two other daughters who were living with him.
The response made Lucy Harrison “quite upset” as she stormed upstairs. While it is unclear how the conversation directly involved Trump, Kris Harrison’s response was in line with conservative MAGA values.
Littler recalled that later in the same day, a bit before the couple was leaving for the airport, Kris Harrison held Lucy’s hand and led her into his bedroom, which was on the ground floor of the house.
Fifteen seconds later, Littler recalled hearing a loud bang, followed by Kris Harrison screaming for his wife. “I remember running into the room and Lucy was lying on the floor near the entrance to the bathroom and Kris was just screaming, just sort of nonsense,” Littler said.
According to a statement read to the court, Kris Harrison said he and his daughter had been watching a news report about gun crime when he told her he owned a gun and asked if she wanted to see it. The pair then went into his bedroom, where he kept a Glock 9mm semi-automatic handgun in a bedside cabinet.
The father and daughter had had a conversation about Trump before the shooting
Image credits: Facebook
“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 said, adding he couldn’t recall if his finger was on the trigger.
Harrison said he bought the gun a few years earlier because he wanted a “sense of security” for his family.
A police officer who responded to the scene, Luciana Escalera, said she could smell alcohol on his breath.
In a statement issued through his attorney, Kris Harrison said he “fully accepted” the consequences of his actions. “There isn’t a day I don’t feel the weight of that loss, a weight I will carry for the rest of my life,” he said.
Harrison’s attorney, Ana Samuel, made an application for coroner Jacqueline Devonish to recuse herself from the case, saying an objective observer may conclude there was a “real possibility she was biased.”
Lois Norris, the attorney of Lucy Harrison’s mother, Jane Coates, called the application an “ambush by Mr Harrison's legal team.” She argued that Kris Harrison was the “person in the room who shot Ms Harrison” and the only person in the room when it happened.
Samuel argued that the inquest had been conducted “in a manner more akin to a criminal investigation than a fact-finding inquiry.”
Coates said her daughter was a “real force of life.” She added, “She cared. She was passionate about things. She loved to have debates about things that meant a lot to her.”
The coroner rejected the application to recuse herself from the case and is expected to deliver her conclusions on Wednesday.