EXCLUSIVE: The heartbroken mum of Lucy Harrison, who was shot dead at her dad’s home in Texas, pay tribute to her daughter ahead of her inquest
EXCLUSIVE: The heartbroken mum of Lucy Harrison, who was shot dead at her dad’s home in Texas, pay tribute to her daughter ahead of her inquest
A mum described the moment she was told her daughter had been shot dead at her dad’s house in the USA. Lucy Harrison, 23, had been on holiday with her boyfriend, Sam Littler, and was visiting her dad and his family in Prosper, Texas, when she was killed in January 2025.
Lucy and Sam were due to fly home just hours after she was fatally injured at her dad’s home. Her mum Jane Coates was woken in the middle of the night by a knock on the door from Sam’s mum to tell her what had happened.
Jane told The ECHO: “I thought it was something to do with Lucy and Sam’s house but then she said she had been shot and she’s not made it. That just doesn’t process. I just ran up the stairs and into my bedroom.”
Jane and Sam sat down exclusively with the ECHO in Jane’s three-storey terraced home in Warrington to speak publicly for the first time about the “beautiful” and “fierce” young woman, who died 13 months ago. Her inquest is due to be heard next week.
‘It’s so hard to put into words who she was as a person’
When asked how she would describe her daughter, Jane paused. “It’s so hard, isn’t it? It’s so hard to say. It’s so hard to capture who she was, and who she still is, using words because they just don’t come close.
“She was full of energy and life, and she was bold and brave. She was so emotionally intelligent, she was able to feel everything and she wasn’t ashamed of feeling everything.”
Lucy attended Park Road Primary School, Great Sankey High School and Barrow Hall College, before studying at Manchester Metropolitan University
She earned a first class degree in Fashion Buying and Merchandising before securing a job at Boohoo as a buyer’s admin assistant – a job she loved.
Jane said: “She had got her dream job and she was working hard. She was passionate. She used to see me as a teacher coming home and doing work, and she would be like ‘I wouldn’t be doing work like that’, basically calling me a mug. But then she would get her laptop out and she would tell me all about the critical path of the shoe department she worked in. She was so excited.”
Lucy moved in with her boyfriend Sam when they bought their house in Warrington in March 2024. Sam sat next to Jane in her living room, while Jane’s dog Freddie, a white maltipoo who Lucy had picked five years ago, bounced around the couch.
Holding back tears, the 23-year-old told the ECHO: “Me and Lucy had both worked really hard to get to where we were. We both never took handouts and just worked hard to get where we were.”
‘I can’t remember the last time I saw Lucy – it’s like my mind has blocked it’
Christmas Day 2024 was a date that was filled with joy and excitement for Lucy, Sam and Jane. It had been their first Christmas in their own home they had bought just nine months earlier.
They welcomed their families round and cooked their first Christmas dinner together for their parents. It was the final farewell before they headed to the airport to travel to Texas, something Lucy had done close to a dozen times before.
Speaking about their first and last Christmas together, Sam said: “I go out with my mates every Christmas Eve and got the call from Lucy to come home early and I wanted to go home. That’s what was important to me.
“Christmas was just perfect. Everyone came round, Jane was here, and I cooked. Just the standard Christmas stuff. But the oven is plugged into a normal plug socket and it blew the fuse to the house midway through.”
On Boxing Day, before they flew to America, Lucy called round to Jane’s, to drop off her mum’s book she had left at her home the day before. Jane knows they went for a walk with Freddie, but struggles to remember anything specific about the encounter.
She said: “Boxing Day was the last time I saw Lucy. I can’t remember it, it’s like my mind has blocked it. I know she came over, I know she popped round before I travelled down to my parents’ in Stoke, and I think it’s my mind trying to protect myself.
“The next day, the 27th, she should have been flying so I downloaded FlightRadar and I actually watched the plane. It went the wrong way and it came off and I was like ‘oh’. Then, sure enough, I got a text from Lucy saying ‘oh my God, the flight engineers are coming, there’s something wrong with the engine’.”
Their flight from Heathrow was cancelled and they were forced to stay the night before travelling to America the following day.
A holiday that changed lives forever
What was meant to be an ordinary holiday, one Lucy had been on many times, will never be forgotten by the people left behind. The day she and Sam were due to fly back to the UK, January 10, saw Lucy shot dead in her dad’s home in the small town of Prosper, Texas.
With a population of less than 45,000 people, the town is little-known suburb in the Collin and Denton counties. Despite the shocking events that took place at the beginning of last year, no American news outlet reported on the death until it was revealed in the UK a month after Lucy was killed.
Jane told the ECHO how it was Sam’s mum, Helen, who broke the news to her having initially missed two phone calls from a detective in America at 1am on Saturday, January 11.
She said: “I was woken up around 2am on Saturday by Helen, Sam’s mum, knocking on the door. I think, normally, you’d expect if someone is knocking on your door in the middle of the night you know something bad has happened, but it just didn’t even process with me.
“I kind of stirred from my sleep and then I could hear the bangs. I was thinking it was the neighbours and then it carried on so I came down the stairs and I hesitated to open the door. Then Helen shouted and told me it was her.
“She told me the news very clearly. I can’t remember exactly what she said but she said it was something to do with Lucy. When she said it I thought, because they were away, I thought it was the house.
“I thought it was something to do with Lucy and Sam’s house but then she said she had been shot and she’s not made it. That just doesn’t process. I just ran up the stairs and into my bedroom.
“I remember Helen sitting on the edge of the bed and I asked her if I was dreaming, it just did not compute, and she said no.”
Following the sudden news her only daughter had died, what came next was just as turbulent as she struggled to get any information about the police investigation into her death.
No prosecutions and an apology from the Foreign Office
The ECHO broke the news last year that no one would face criminal charges relating to the shooting of Lucy, with Jane explaining how she was not kept in the loop by US investigators. Jane explained she was not contacted by Cheshire Police until days before the opening of her daughter’s inquest on February 12 last year.
When a British national dies in unnatural circumstances in America, British authorities have no jurisdiction. Despite Lucy suffering a gunshot wound to her chest from “medium range” fired by another person, a grand jury found that no one would be prosecuted for the death on June 10 last year
A grand jury in Texas consists of 12 people and determine whether there is probable cause to believe a person committed a felony, assessing all evidence in private. Despite the person accused of committing a crime being charged by police, they are not named if the grand jury decide to conclude criminal proceedings.
However, through all of this, Jane told the ECHO how she and her family needed better communication from the Foreign Office.
She said: “They sent me a guide for bereaved families via an email on January 12. Any bereaved families member who is in shock and is distraught, you’re telling me that they’re going to read that, on their own?”
In the guide, on the second page, it said: “You will be assigned a caseworker with knowledge of the country in which your friend or relative died.”
It continues to say Jane would receive support with legal proceedings and guidance following Lucy’s funeral. Jane continued: “For me, we needed better communication about what on earth was happening over there in terms of their systems and their processes.
“They’ve got a consulate case worker out there who I had a meeting with and they said we needed better communication but when it’s a developed country they expect the authorities to liaise directly with us. What happens when they don’t?”
Jane claims it wasn’t until Sam and Helen rang the Attorney General more than a month after Lucy’s death that they were able to access information relating to the investigation.
It wasn’t until April that Jane and Sam were allocated a victim support worker from the Foreign Office following a referral from Cheshire Police, something the government department eventually apologised for.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told the ECHO: “We supported the family of a British woman who died in the US and were in contact with the local authorities.”
The spokesperson also directed the ECHO to the government’s guidance when a person dies abroad.
Living life ‘fiercely and fearlessly’ 13 months on
It has been more than a year since Lucy’s death, with Jane and Sam still navigating their grief. Sam has returned to his job as an account manager while still receiving counselling.
Jane is back to working as a deputy manager of a primary school in the area, but can’t help the feeling that Lucy could walk through the door any minute.
“It’s when you hear the floorboards creek in the morning and I think ‘oh, Lucy is out of bed’, but she’s not. It’s just muscle memory,” Jane said.
Since returning to work, Jane, 49, said she has maintained a relationship with the parents of the school and kept an open dialogue on the situation she and her family have found themselves in.
The next date in the diary is Tuesday, February 10, when an inquest at Cheshire Coroner’s Court will be held across two days exploring the facts of Lucy’s death. It was is also likely to be reported who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed her.
Jane said: “I went to observe an inquest a couple of weeks ago to give me an idea of what it would look and feel like.
“When the coroner said the job of a coroner is to answer questions of why somebody died an unnatural death and to explore fully, fairly and fearlessly all of the evidence. That is what we are hoping for.
“Using that word fearlessly, when she said that, I just had a moment of Lucy being with me.”
Lucy’s funeral was held at St Elphin’s Parish Church in Warrington on February 24 last year, with Jane explaining how 400 people packed out Warrington’s largest church to remember her daughter.
“At Lucy’s funeral, my message to people was for them to continue to live their life fiercely and fearlessly like Lucy did. She wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t afraid to feel.”
