Jane Coates is traveling from England to Texas to demand that prosecutors reopen the investigation into her daughter’s shooting death.
Coates, the mother of Lucy Harrison, 23, told The Post she wants Collin County authorities to sit down with her family and hear what independent experts have concluded about the January 10 killing. “I simply want the truth about what happened,” she said. “I want the people responsible for investigating her death to sit down with us and listen to what we have been told by independent experts.”
Lucy Harrison had traveled from the UK with her boyfriend, Sam Littler, to visit her father, Kris Harrison, 52, and her two younger half-sisters at his home outside Dallas. Hours before she was shot, she and her father had engaged in what Littler described as a “big argument” about Donald Trump, who was days away from his second inauguration.
Kris Harrison, a telecommunications executive, told police the shooting was accidental. “It just went off as she stood there, like as I pulled it out it went off,” he said in video provided to a UK inquest into Lucy’s death in February. He claimed he had taken the Glock 9mm pistol out of a box to show his daughter after she asked whether he owned a gun.
A Texas grand jury ruled Lucy Harrison’s death an accident, allowing Kris Harrison to evade manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges. The grand jury notes remain sealed, and it remains unclear exactly what evidence prosecutors presented.
Craig Miller, a retired Dallas deputy chief with more than 30 years of homicide experience, has studied the bodycam footage, police reports and autopsy findings and insists the father’s account does not hold up. “Guns just don’t go off,” he told The Post. “The only person who could have fired the gun is the dad. If he was trying to show it to her, he must have pulled the trigger. He may not have been familiar with the gun but there was a bullet in the chamber. But it is not a defense to not know. It is his gun and he should know how to operate his weapon.”
Miller also challenged Harrison’s description of the shooting mechanics. “[Harrison] said he took the gun out of the case and it just went off,” Miller continued. “If that was true, why didn’t the bullet come in through the side? It entered directly through the center of the chest. It was fired at a downward trajectory and that is not consistent … this does not add up.”
The homicide detective pointed to bodycam footage showing Harrison initially denying he had been drinking before investigators learned he had consumed a 17-ounce carton of white wine that day. “The dad lied to the police in the very first question asked,” Miller said. “When a person lies and is inconsistent with their testimony, those are important facts for the police to look at and consider. It is on the officers to say we will have to get his blood drawn and see what level of intoxicated he is because if he is drunk, he won’t actually know what took place.”
Miller believes police should have administered a gun residue test and examined both Harrison’s and Lucy’s cell phones for potential evidence. “I don’t think the officers checked that, which I think is key,” he added. “[That] would have made it simpler and better for everybody else to look at the case properly.” He argued that if the grand jury was not informed about Harrison’s intoxication level and the mismatch between his account and the forensic evidence, “then the grand jury should be made aware.”
Coates is making the transatlantic journey with her attorney, Radd Seiger, who previously helped secure justice in the high-profile death of British teenager Harry Dunn. “I have dealt with families facing serious failures by public authorities in a number of jurisdictions around the world but I have never seen anything quite like this,” Seiger told The Post. “Here we have a family raising serious questions about a homicide investigation and the authorities are simply closing the door rather than engaging with them.”
The UK inquest into Lucy Harrison’s death, held in Cheshire in February, produced findings that sharply contradicted the Texas grand jury’s conclusion. Jacqueline Devonish, the Senior Coroner for Cheshire, described Kris Harrison as a “functioning alcoholic” and ruled that Lucy was “unlawfully killed.” Devonish determined that Harrison’s actions amounted to gross negligence manslaughter, stating that “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.” The UK ruling carries no binding legal force in American courts.
Through his attorney, Kris Harrison has previously stated that he “fully accepted” the consequences of his action and that “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.”
Coates remains focused on securing accountability for the daughter she described as funny, kind and full of dreams. “There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about Lucy and everything she should have had in front of her,” she told The Post. “I want people to see her as a person, not just as a case. She was funny, kind, loving and full of life. She had dreams. She had people who loved her deeply. She deserved a future.”
Coates and Seiger are expected to press their case directly with the Collin County District Attorney’s Office during their upcoming visit to Texas.