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DALLAS (BFMG) — Body camera footage has been released showing the moments police arrived at a Texas home where a British woman was fatally shot by her father in what a UK coroner has ruled was an unlawful killing.
Lucy Harrison, 23, from Warrington in Cheshire, died after being shot in the chest in January last year while visiting her father, Kris Harrison, at his home in Prosper, a suburb of Dallas.
The footage, released by Cheshire Coroner’s Court, shows Kris telling an officer the gun fired as he removed it from a locked bedside cabinet while they were preparing to leave for the airport. He is heard saying his daughter noticed the firearm and asked if he had a gun.
“She said, ‘You got a gun?’ I said, ‘yes,’ I got it out, and it just went off — and she stood there like, as I pulled it out, it went off,” he told the officer. He added that he put the gun on the bed straight away and said it had been kept in a locked box in the bedside cabinet.
Lucy’s boyfriend, Sam Littler, who was staying at the house, can be seen nearby in the footage holding his head as officers speak with Kris.
The video was made public days after a senior coroner ruled Lucy had been unlawfully killed on the grounds of gross negligence manslaughter. Senior coroner Jacqueline Devonish said the shot to Lucy’s chest indicated the gun must have been pointed at her without appropriate safety checks.
“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,” Devonish said, calling his actions reckless.
The inquest heard Lucy and her father had argued shortly before the shooting, including about U.S. President Donald Trump, who was due to be inaugurated that day. Littler told the hearing he heard a loud bang seconds after the pair went into a bedroom where a Glock handgun was stored.
Evidence presented at the inquest showed that Kris admitted to drinking wine earlier in the day. He did not attend the hearing in Cheshire Coroner’s Court but said in a statement that he had bought the weapon to give his family a “sense of security.”
“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 in the statement.
A grand jury in the United States later determined there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges against him.
Outside court, Lucy’s mother, Jane Coates, said the ruling had finally given her daughter “her voice back” and criticized Texas gun laws, saying her daughter had been failed by the system.
The coroner described Lucy’s death as a tragic loss of a young woman who had her whole life ahead of her.
