The mother of a British woman shot dead by her father in Texas has travelled to the offices of US prosecutors to demand that her daughter’s death be investigated again.
Jane Coates, 49, made the journey of more than 4,000 miles to the Collin County District Attorney’s Office, calling for the inquiry into the shooting of her daughter, Lucy Harrison, to be reopened.
Ms Coates said she had travelled to Texas so she could confront officials directly and ask them what had happened to her daughter.
“I’ve travelled thousands of miles to Texas because I’m not prepared to give up on Lucy. I never will,” she said.
Ms Harrison, a 23-year-old fashion buyer from Warrington, Cheshire, was shot in the chest on January 10, 2025, while visiting her father, Kris Harrison, at his home in Prosper, an affluent town north of Dallas.
Local police opened an investigation, but records indicate the shooting was treated as accidental from the beginning. Mr Harrison, 52, was never arrested.
Mr Harrison said his gun had discharged accidentally in the master bedroom as he showed it to his daughter, just minutes before she was due to leave for her return journey to the UK.
Lucy Harrison, 23, was shot in the chest on January 10, 2025, at her father’s home in Prosper, Texas
Her mother, Jane Coates, arrived at the US prosecutors’ offices on Monday to demand a fresh investigation into her daughter’s death
A grand jury declined to indict her father, Kris Harrison, 52, and ruled that her death was accidental
A Texas grand jury decided there was no case to answer. However, an inquest in the UK concluded earlier this year that Ms Harrison had been unlawfully killed.
Ms Coates believes the investigation should be reopened, arguing that important lines of inquiry were never properly pursued.
Outside the district attorney’s office on Monday, she urged officials to meet her and listen to her concerns.
“I just wish they cared enough to meet me. I have lost my daughter. I can never get her back,” she said.
“The very least I thought I could expect was for the people responsible for investigating her death to give me the courtesy of sitting down with me and hearing me out.”
Among the issues raised by Ms Coates is the decision not to conduct toxicology tests, despite officers reportedly smelling alcohol on Mr Harrison at the time of the shooting.
She has also questioned the absence of gunshot residue testing, inconsistencies in Mr Harrison’s account and unanswered questions about the bullet’s trajectory and the entry wound.
“These are not minor errors or omissions. They are fundamental to any homicide investigation and they simply weren’t done,” she said.
Her concerns have been supported by Craig Miller, a respected former Dallas police chief who reviewed the case files and concluded that investigators appeared not to have followed several key lines of inquiry.
Although local police launched an investigation, records show the shooting was treated as an accident from the outset and Mr Harrison was never arrested. Pictured: Lucy Harrison
‘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,’ Coates (middle) previously said
Mr Miller, who now works as a law enforcement expert witness, agreed there were several departures from what he described as nationally accepted investigative ‘best practice’.
Welcoming his findings, Ms Coates said: ‘We have been saying for a long time that Lucy’s death was not properly investigated.
‘Craig Miller’s review is so important… he is a former senior Dallas police officer who understands the standards expected of a major American police investigation.’
Ms Coates’s visit to Texas comes after repeated requests for meetings with both Prosper Police and the Collin County District Attorney’s Office were declined, according to the campaign for justice for her daughter.
Appealing directly to the authorities, Ms Coates urged them to reconsider, adding: ‘Lucy deserved a proper investigation when she died. She must have one now.’
Radd Seiger, spokesman for the Justice for Lucy Harrison campaign, said Mis Coates had been forced to make the journey because she still had not received answers after her daughter’s death.
‘We decided to come to Texas to appeal directly to the American people about the gross injustice in Lucy’s case,’ he added.
‘Having been here for a couple of days now, we have been quite simply overwhelmed by messages of support from people in Prosper, Collin County and right across Texas.
‘You do not need to be a lawyer or police officer to spot the terrible gaps in the investigation.
‘There is no other way to put it, I am afraid. The Texas authorities let Lucy down. They have let her loved ones down.’
He added: ‘Lucy and her loved ones deserve justice. The police and District Attorney responsible for this mess can run from the truth, but they cannot hide from the people.’
The campaign plans a week of media appearances and public engagements in Dallas as pressure grows on local authorities to revisit the case.
Prosper Police and the Collin County District Attorney’s Office have maintained that the investigation into Ms Harrison’s death was ‘thorough and complete’.
A fundraising campaign to help cover the family’s travel costs has so far raised more than £7,000.
To donate, visit the Justice for Lucy Harrison GoFundMe page at Justice4Luce.
