A woman who was shot dead by her alcoholic father in Texas after arguing about President Donald Trump was unlawfully killed, a court ruled.
Lucy Harrison, 23, was shot in the chest by her father, Kris Harrison, 51, after the pair had gotten into an argument about the president last year in her father’s Dallas suburban home.
Prosecutors in Collin County failed to secure an indictment against Kris after a grand jury heard that his gun accidentally fired when he “lifted it to show her.”
But Lucy’s death received fresh scrutiny this week in her native England. Sudden deaths, even those that occur in other countries, are investigated by special courts in hearings known as inquests.
On Wednesday, senior coroner Jacqueline Devonish of the Cheshire coroner’s court ruled that Lucy died in an unlawful killing from gross negligence manslaughter.
Devonish said that Kris “knew full well he had shot his own daughter, pointing a gun at chest height and pulling the trigger.”
Over the course of a two-day inquest, the Cheshire coroner’s court heard details about what led up to Lucy’s killing on Jan. 10, 2025. She and her boyfriend, Sam Littler, had been visiting Kris in Texas over the holidays from their home in the U.K.
Littler detailed the day leading up to Lucy’s killing, noting that Lucy and Kris got into “quite a big argument” about then-president-elect Trump.
While Lucy and Kris were discussing Trump, Lucy asked him, “How would you feel if I was the girl in that situation and I’d been sexually assaulted?”
Kris responded that it would not upset him too much, as he had two other daughters living with him in Texas. Littler said that Kris’s response made Lucy grow “quite upset,” and she went upstairs.
Littler also said that Kris, an alcoholic, had drunk nearly an entire bottle of white wine the day of the incident. Littler also noted that Lucy was uncomfortable talking with her father about his gun ownership.
Later that day, about half an hour before Lucy and Littler were set to leave for the airport to go back to the U.K., Littler recalled that Kris took Lucy by the hand in a “mysterious” way and led her to his bedroom.
Littler then heard a loud bang, followed by Kris screaming for his wife, Heather.
“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 during the inquest.
Kris, who moved to the U.S. when Lucy was a child, did not attend the hearing but sent a statement to the court defending his actions and claiming Lucy had asked to see his gun.
“As I lifted the gun to show her I suddenly heard a loud bang. I did not understand what had happened. Lucy immediately fell,” the statement read.
“I fully accept the consequences of my actions, and 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, and I know that nothing I say can ease the heartbreak this tragedy has caused,” he wrote.
The court, however, ruled Kris was a “secret drinker” and was teasing Lucy with his loaded gun.
“His actions have killed his own daughter and in the cold light of day it is hoped that he now recognizes the risk he posed to her life in circumstances in which he had no experience of guns, had undertaken no training and had never fired a gun,” the ruling stated.
