Four years after tragedy, new love for PC Harper’s widow
THE DEATH of her police constable husband horrified the nation after he was dragged for a mile down country lanes by a gang’s getaway car.
Now, four years on, widow Lissie Harper, 32, has revealed she has found love again – but also admitted how emotional the experience has been.
Her husband Andrew, 28, died after being caught in a strap of the fleeing car while trying to stop burglars stealing a quad bike in Berkshire.
Mrs Harper has not named her new beau, who is also an emergency worker. Speaking of the romance for the first time on the podcast The Stigma of Grief, she said: ‘There’s this expectation to be this figure, the grieving widow... like we’re expected to wear black for the rest of our lives. It’s not sustainable... and it’s not fair.
‘It’s normal to feel scared and wonder if you’re doing the right thing. It’s a common feeling of, “Do I deserve to feel happy again? Am I betraying the person I love who isn’t here?” I think probably most of the people who sadly aren’t with us would want their loved ones to find happiness again.’
PC Harper’s death occurred hours before he was due to begin his honeymoon with his new wife in 2019 – they had been married just four weeks.
His three teenage killers were jailed for manslaughter in 2020, with the ringleader sentenced to 16 years and the two others to 13 years.
Mrs Harper successfully campaigned for harsher punishment for attacks on emergency service workers and Harper’s Law came into effect in 2022.
The business owner from Oxford admitted her first date felt ‘strange’. But she said: ‘It’s not going to be the same, it’s not going to be better or worse, it’s just going to be different and that’s been really important for me to find that again.’
She added: ‘You become a different person when you go through something like this. You kind of grow out of the person you were before because you have no choice.’
‘It’s normal to feel scared’