An inquest into Lucy’s death will be held this week
Lucy Harrison’s mum Jane Coates.(Pic Andrew Teebay).(Image: Andrew Teebay)
A ‘heartbroken’ Warrington mother has described the moment she found out her 23-year-old daughter had been shot and killed in the US.
In an exclusive interview with Liverpool Echo, Jane Coates reminisced on the “beautiful” and “fierce” young woman Lucy Harrison was, 13 months after she was shot in the chest from “medium range” at her father’s home in Prosper, Texas.
The former Manchester Metropolitan University student had been on holiday with her boyfriend, Sam Littler, when she was fatally wounded. The exact circumstances of how Ms Harrison was shot have not been publicly revealed.
An inquest at Cheshire Coroner’s Court will be held on Tuesday, February 10, to explore the facts of Lucy’s death. It is expected that the identity of who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed her will finally be revealed.
Speaking from her home in Warrington, Jane Coates, 49, described to the Echo’s Ben Haslam how she was woken in the middle of the night by a knock on the door from Sam’s mum to tell her what had happened.
” 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,” Jane explained. “I thought it was something to do with Lucy and Sam’s house but then Helen 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.”
Lucy Harrison.(Image: Liverpool Echo)
Lucy and Sam were due to fly home to the UK just hours after she died. Following the sudden news her only daughter was no longer alive, what came next was just as turbulent as she struggled to get any information about the police investigation into her death.
In June of last year, a grand jury in the US found that nobody would face prosecution over Lucy’s death. In Texas, twelve people are chosen at random and given the task of discussing and determining 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. To make things more difficult for Jane, when a British national dies in unnatural circumstances in America, UK authorities have no jurisdiction.
Jane claims she was not kept in the loop by US investigators, and told the ECHO how she and her family needed better communication from the Foreign Office.
“They sent me a guide for bereaved families via an email on January 12,” she said. “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?”
Pictures and tributes for Lucy Harrison at her home in Warrington.(Image: Liverpool Echo)
In the guide, on the second page, it states: “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.
Lucy Harrison and boyfriend Sam Littler.(Image: Liverpool Echo)
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.”
Now, with more than a year having passed since Lucy’s death on January 10, 2025, 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 explained.
With just days to go before Lucy’s inquest, Jane hopes she will finally get answers to questions that have troubled her for the past 13 months.
“I went to observe an inquest a couple of weeks ago to give me an idea of what it would look and feel like,” Jane said. “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, I thought to myself, ‘that is what we are hoping for’.
“When she used the word ‘fearlessly’, I just had a moment of Lucy being with me.” she added. “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.”