Lucy Harrison died of a gunshot wound to the chest on Jan. 10, 2025, after her father pulled her into a bedroom at his home in Prosper, Texas, shortly before she and her partner were due to leave for Warrington. Senior Coroner Devonish reached conclusions at the inquest on Feb. 11, 2026, and found that the events inside the room ended with a fatal shot while Harrison was across from the gun.
Harrison, 23, had been visiting her father, Kris, with Sam Littler, and the couple were due to fly back that day. Littler was in the living room when Harrison was shot. After the inquest findings, he said the evidence left him with continuing questions and concerns about her death and the investigation that followed.
The coroner found that Kris had been drinking alcohol without anyone else in the house knowing before he took Harrison into the bedroom. The court heard that the gun would have been pointed in Harrison’s direction from across the room, without checking whether it was loaded, before the trigger was pulled. Those actions were described as reckless.
The inquest also heard that Harrison had asked to see her father’s gun, according to Kris. But her family said she was staunchly anti-gun and often argued with him about owning a weapon. Devonish identified inconsistencies in parts of Kris’s account and did not accept some of his statements, including his claim that the gun had simply gone off.
Kris did not attend the UK inquest, saying it was too emotionally difficult for him to be there. The result leaves the basic fact of Harrison’s death settled, but it does not close the wider doubts around how a visit that was meant to end with a flight home became a fatal shooting in a Texas bedroom.
In a public statement issued after the findings, Littler said he had taken time to process the evidence heard at the inquest and the conclusions reached by Devonish. He said he recognized that the UK and Texas operate under different legal systems and firearms laws, and that he understood the challenges faced by agencies responding to a traumatic incident. He added that the coroner’s findings on the handling of the firearm, alcohol consumption and the absence of blood alcohol or breathalyser testing had left him with continuing questions about the circumstances of Harrison’s death and the investigation that followed.
He also said the coroner’s court was the first time he had heard, in a formal legal setting, a clear account of what was believed to have happened on Jan. 10, 2025. Littler said he had held concerns for more than a year but had chosen not to speak publicly while placing his trust in the UK coroner’s process.
