A former FedEx driver was sentenced to death on Tuesday after pleading guilty to the murder of a 7-year-old girl he took while delivering a Christmas gift to her Texas home.
Tanner Horner’s penalty was decided by jurors in a Fort Worth courtroom after approximately a month of testimony and evidence, including audio of Athena Strand’s final moments from inside his delivery van. Horner, 34, pleaded guilty to capital murder in the 2022 homicide last month, just before his trial began. Athena’s body was discovered two days after being reported missing from her home in the rural community of Paradise, near Fort Worth.
Horner did not react visibly when the judge read the sentence, according to a livestream of the court proceedings.
Jurors determined that Horner had a high risk of committing criminal violence and posing a continuous threat to society. They claimed that there was nothing in the commission of the crime or Horner’s background that justified life without parole rather than death.
In his opening statement, prosecutor James Stainton told jurors that Horner had told “lie upon lie upon lie upon lie” in the case, including telling investigators that he unintentionally struck Athena with his vehicle while making the delivery and subsequently killed her in a fit of terror.
Several jurors cried as they watched video and heard audio from inside the van after Athena was taken. He could be seen carrying her into the vehicle and drove away, warning her not to scream or he would injure her.
Horner immediately covered the camera, but the audio kept recording. Horner asks Athena questions about her age and where she attends school before halting the van and informing her they are going to “hang out.” Horner urges her to take off her shirt, and she starts crying and wonders if he’s a kidnapper.
She asks, “Why are you doing this?” He responds, “Because you are pretty.”
“My mom says I can’t do that to somebody,” she says. “And you can’t do that to me either.”
Athena’s screams can be heard throughout the recording, which runs for more than an hour. He tells her at one point, “If you don’t shut up, I will hurt you worse.”
A medical examiner said that Athena died from blunt force injuries, suffocation, and strangling.
While acknowledging during opening statements that the evidence against Horner was “overwhelming” and “terrible,” Horner’s attorney, Steven Goble, told jurors that Horner’s mother drank while pregnant, that he has autism and has suffered from “various mental illnesses throughout his life,” and that he has been exposed to a “massive amount” of lead.
Goble had asked the jury to sentence Horner to life in prison.
Athena’s family has stated that the package Horner sent was a Christmas present for her: a box of “You Can Be Anything” Barbies.
Horner’s counsel argued that the trial would not have been fair if it had been held in rural Wise County rather than Fort Worth. ____
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