A 23-year-old British fashion buyer was shot to death by her father last year in Texas after they argued about U.S. President Donald Trump, according to an inquest held Tuesday in her hometown of Warrington, England.
Lucy Harrison was fatally shot on Jan. 10, 2025, in the Dallas-area home of her father, Kris Harrison, while vacationing in the United States with her boyfriend, Sam Littler.
According to Littler, his girlfriend was bothered by her dad’s gun ownership, and things came to a head the day the couple was supposed to fly home to Britain.
The father and daughter started arguing about Trump at some point, and, according to the BBC, Lucy Harrison asked her dad, “How would you feel if I was the girl in that situation and I’d been sexually assaulted?”
Kris Harrison, who had moved to the United States when his daughter was a child, reportedly responded that he had two other daughters who lived with him, so it would not upset him that much.
The callous remark prompted his daughter to run upstairs, according to the Independent.
Later on, about half an hour before Littler and Harrison were set to go to the airport, the 23-year-old was downstairs in the kitchen when her father reportedly took her hand and led her into a bedroom on the ground floor.
Littler testified that about 15 seconds later, he heard a loud bang and Kris Harrison screaming for his wife, Heather, according to the BBC.
“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 told the court.
Police in Prosper, Texas, investigated the shooting as possible manslaughter, but a Collin County grand jury declined to charge Harrison last June.
Harrison didn’t attend the inquest, but his previous visits to rehab for alcohol addiction were put into the public record, as was his written statement that he had relapsed on the day of the shooting by drinking about 550 ml of white wine.
According to Harrison’s statement, he and his daughter had been watching a TV segment on gun crime when he asked her if she wanted to see the Glock 9mm semi-automatic handgun that he kept in a bedroom cabinet.
“As I lifted the gun to show her I suddenly heard a loud bang. I did not understand what had happened. Lucy immediately fell,” Harrison said in the statement, claiming he did not remember if his finger was on the Glock’s trigger.
He also stated that he “fully accepted” the consequences of his actions, adding, “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.”
Ana Samuel, Harrison’s representative at Tuesday’s inquest, attempted at the start of the hearing to get coroner Jacqueline Devonish recused, saying the inquest had been conducted “in a manner more akin to a criminal investigation than a fact-finding inquiry.”
Devonish declined to step down from the inquest, noting that Kris Harrison “was the only person in the room at the time Lucy was shot and it was important that he provided his statement of fact,” the Liverpool Echo reported.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
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