DALLAS — A former FedEx driver pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing a 7-year-old girl after delivering a Christmas gift to her Texas home, where he told authorities he accidentally struck her with his van and then strangled her in a fit of panic.
Tanner Horner faces either the death penalty or life in prison in the 2022 killing of Athena Strand, whose body was found two days after she was reported missing in the rural town of Paradise, near Fort Worth. Jurors will now decide Horner’s punishment.
“The only truthful thing that Tanner Horner told law enforcement was that he killed her,” Wise County Dist. Atty. James Stainton said during opening statements. “The pattern and web of lies that he put together, it’s going to be hard for y’all to keep up with. It is lie upon lie upon lie upon lie.”
As Athena’s stepmother testified, the jury was shown an image of Athena taken from a video inside the delivery truck. She was still alive and sitting on her knees behind the driver’s seat.
Stainton said the scenario that Horner told authorities — that he hit her with his vehicle and panicked — is an “absolute lie.” He said she was uninjured when Horner put her into the vehicle.
“The first thing Tanner Horner says to Athena when he picks her up and puts her in that truck, he leans down and he says: ‘Don’t scream or I’ll hurt you.’ He says that twice,” Stainton said.
Stainton told jurors that the evidence in the case is “rough,” and they will watch video of what happened that day and then hear audio after the camera has been covered up.
“You are going to hear what a 250-pound man can do to a 67-pound child,” Stainton said. “And when I say it’s horrible, I mean it.”
He said Athena fought Horner, and his DNA was found under her fingernails. He also said Horner’s DNA was found “in places where you shouldn’t find DNA on a 7-year-old girl.”
According to an arrest warrant, Horner told authorities that he strangled Athena after accidentally hitting her with his van while making a delivery. Horner told investigators that Athena wasn’t seriously hurt after he hit her while backing up, but he panicked and put her in his van.
Horner said he didn’t want her to tell her father what happened, so he first tried to break the girl’s neck and when that didn’t work, he strangled her with his hands in the back of the van, the warrant said. The warrant said Horner took investigators to where he’d left Athena’s body.
In opening statements, Horner’s attorney Steven Goble told jurors: “When someone’s brain is what’s injured, you don’t see it.”
While acknowledging that the evidence against Horner was “overwhelming” and “terrible,” he told jurors that Horner’s mother drank while she was pregnant and that he has autism and suffered from “various mental illnesses throughout his life” in addition to being exposed to a “massive amount of lead.”
Goble asked jurors to sentence him to life in prison.
Ashley Strand, Athena’s stepmother, told jurors that the package Horner had dropped off was a Christmas present for Athena — a box of “You Can Be Anything” Barbies. Strand, who has since divorced Athena’s father, said Athena enjoyed living out on their land in the country, where she got to “run wild and free.”
The trial was moved from rural Wise County to Fort Worth after Horner’s attorneys argued that he would not receive a fair trial.
Stengle writes for the Associated Press.
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