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A former FedEx delivery driver who pleaded guilty to the aggravated kidnapping and capital murder of seven-year-old Athena Strand was sentenced to death Tuesday by a Tarrant County jury after less than three hours of deliberation.
Tanner Lynn Horner, 34, abducted the first-grader from the driveway of her family’s rural home in Paradise, Wise County, on Nov 30, 2022, while delivering a Christmas gift: a box of “You Can Be Anything” Barbie dolls. He pulled her into his delivery van, where audio later captured her final moments before he killed her. Strand’s body was found two days later. Horner led authorities to the location.
Horner entered the surprise guilty plea on April 7, 2026, just as his capital murder trial was set to begin in Fort Worth. The proceedings moved directly to the punishment phase, where jurors, after hearing more than two weeks of testimony, were asked to decide between death by lethal injection or life in prison without parole. They unanimously found that Horner posed a continuing threat to society and that no mitigating evidence warranted sparing him.
During the sentencing phase, jurors heard chilling audio recorded inside Horner’s van after he covered the camera. The recording captured Horner asking Athena her age and school, then stopping the vehicle. He told her to take off her shirt and said, “You’re really pretty. You know that?” Athena repeatedly responded “no,” asked for her mother, and questioned whether he was a kidnapper. She told him, “My mom says I can’t do that to somebody, and you can’t do that to me either.”
The audio included her cries, screams, banging sounds, and Horner warning her to be quiet or he would hurt her worse.
Jurors sobbed and kept their heads down as the recording played, according to courtroom observers.
A medical examiner testified that Athena died from blunt force injuries, smothering, and strangulation. Horner initially told investigators he accidentally struck her with the van and strangled her in a panic, but prosecutors called his account part of a series of lies. State District Judge George Gallagher formally imposed the death sentence, ordering Horner to be executed by lethal injection before sunrise on a date to be set at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.
Horner showed no visible emotion as the sentence was read. An automatic appeal has been filed. Athena’s uncle, Elijah Strand, addressed Horner in court: “There are no words that truly capture the devastation that Tanner Horner caused us and our family… It was the best thing to see her running up to me with her arms open, yelling ‘Uncle Elijah,’ and it’s one of my last memories I have of her. And now I get to never hear that again.” He added that Athena was “laughter, curiosity, kindness and innocence” whose dreams were stolen.
Wise County District Attorney James Stainton told jurors the case exemplified why the death penalty exists for the most extreme crimes, describing Horner as “proof why parents hug their children a little tighter.” The defense had argued for a life sentence, citing Horner’s fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, autism diagnosis, mental health issues, and difficult upbringing. Jurors rejected those mitigating factors. Athena’s family expressed relief at the verdict but noted that appeals will likely delay any execution for years.
The case drew widespread attention in North Texas, where the quiet community of Paradise was shattered by the abduction and killing of the young girl who had been playing outside her home.
This article was originally published by SnDMedia.
