A FedEx driver has pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping in the death of seven-year-old Athena Strand, revealing a far more sinister reality than the accident he initially claimed.
Tanner Horner, 34, entered the plea on April 7, just before his trial was set to begin in Wise County, Texas. The case stems from November 30, 2022, when Horner was delivering a package containing a Barbie doll—meant to be Athena’s Christmas gift—to her father’s home in Paradise, Texas.
Although Horner later told investigators he accidentally struck the girl with his van and panicked, forcing her into the vehicle to avoid telling her father, prosecutors presented a darker version of events. District Attorney James Stainton revealed that Athena was conscious and uninjured when she was placed in the van, and that Horner’s first words to her were a threat to be silent.
Surveillance footage contradicted Horner’s claim of panic, showing him driving calmly and even whistling shortly after the abduction, while Athena was visibly distressed inside the vehicle. According to the arrest warrant, Horner then strangled the seven-year-old to death and dumped her body near the Trinity River, about ten miles from where she was taken.
Warning jurors of the graphic evidence, Stainton—a prosecutor of over twenty years—noted that audio recordings captured the brutality of what a 250-pound man could do to a 67-pound child. Having confessed to the crimes, Horner now faces the possibility of the death penalty.
