DALLAS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s punishment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only truthful thing that Tanner Horner told law enforcement was that he killed her,\u201d Wise County Dist. Atty. James Stainton said during opening statements. \u201cThe pattern and web of lies that he put together, it\u2019s going to be hard for y\u2019all to keep up with. It is lie upon lie upon lie upon lie.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Athena\u2019s 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\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n
Stainton said the scenario that Horner told authorities \u2014 that he hit her with his vehicle and panicked \u2014 is an \u201cabsolute lie.\u201d He said she was uninjured when Horner put her into the vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing Tanner Horner says to Athena when he picks her up and puts her in that truck, he leans down and he says: \u2018Don\u2019t scream or I\u2019ll hurt you.\u2019 He says that twice,\u201d Stainton said.<\/p>\n
Stainton told jurors that the evidence in the case is \u201crough,\u201d and they will watch video of what happened that day and then hear audio after the camera has been covered up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are going to hear what a 250-pound man can do to a 67-pound child,\u201d Stainton said. \u201cAnd when I say it\u2019s horrible, I mean it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Athena fought Horner, and his DNA was found under her fingernails. He also said Horner\u2019s DNA was found \u201cin places where you shouldn\u2019t find DNA on a 7-year-old girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t seriously hurt after he hit her while backing up, but he panicked and put her in his van.<\/p>\n
Horner said he didn\u2019t want her to tell her father what happened, so he first tried to break the girl\u2019s neck and when that didn\u2019t 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\u2019d left Athena\u2019s body.<\/p>\n
In opening statements, Horner\u2019s attorney Steven Goble told jurors: \u201cWhen someone\u2019s brain is what\u2019s injured, you don\u2019t see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While acknowledging that the evidence against Horner was \u201coverwhelming\u201d and \u201cterrible,\u201d he told jurors that Horner\u2019s mother drank while she was pregnant and that he has autism and suffered from \u201cvarious mental illnesses throughout his life\u201d in addition to being exposed to a \u201cmassive amount of lead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goble asked jurors to sentence him to life in prison.<\/p>\n
Ashley Strand, Athena\u2019s stepmother, told jurors that the package Horner had dropped off was a Christmas present for Athena \u2014 a box of \u201cYou Can Be Anything\u201d Barbies. Strand, who has since divorced Athena\u2019s father, said Athena enjoyed living out on their land in the country, where she got to \u201crun wild and free.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial was moved from rural Wise County to Fort Worth after Horner\u2019s attorneys argued that he would not receive a fair trial.<\/p>\n
Stengle writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0A former FedEx driver pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing a 7-year-old girl after delivering a Christmas gift to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[98092,2397,98093,35751,35376,29480,18349,116,118,117,98089,98090,57121,98091,241,4437,96300,28386],"class_list":{"0":"post-262051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-7-year-old-girl","9":"tag-arrest-warrant","10":"tag-ashley-strand","11":"tag-athena-strand","12":"tag-authority","13":"tag-delivery","14":"tag-dna","15":"tag-fort-worth","16":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","17":"tag-fort-worth-news","18":"tag-horner","19":"tag-james-stainton","20":"tag-juror","21":"tag-lie","22":"tag-life","23":"tag-prison","24":"tag-tanner-horner","25":"tag-van"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}