Former Fedex Driver Sentenced To Death For Killing 7-year-old Girl After Delivery At Her Texas Home

DALLAS — A erstwhile FedEx driver was sentenced to decease Tuesday aft he pleaded blameworthy to sidesplitting a 7-year-old woman he took from her Texas location while delivering a Christmas gift.

Jurors successful a Fort Worth courtroom decided connected Tanner Horner’s reward aft proceeding astir a period of grounds and grounds that included audio of Athena Strand’s past moments from wrong nan transportation van. Horner, 34, pleaded blameworthy to superior execution past period successful nan 2022 sidesplitting conscionable arsenic his proceedings began. Athena’s assemblage was recovered 2 days aft she was reported missing from her location successful nan agrarian municipality of Paradise, adjacent Fort Worth.

Horner didn’t visibly respond erstwhile nan judge publication nan sentence, according to a livestream of nan tribunal proceedings.

Jurors recovered location was a probability Horner would perpetrate criminal unit and beryllium a continuing threat to society. They said location was thing successful nan committee of nan crime aliases successful Horner’s inheritance to warrant life without parole alternatively of death.

Prosecutor James Stainton told jurors successful opening statements that Horner had told “lie upon dishonesty upon dishonesty upon lie” successful nan case, including telling authorities that he accidentally struck Athena pinch his van while making nan transportation and past killed her successful a fresh of panic.

Several jurors cried arsenic they were shown video and heard audio from wrong nan van aft Athena was taken. He could beryllium seen lifting her into nan van, and past driving away, telling her not to shriek aliases he’d wounded her.

Horner past covered nan camera, but nan audio continued recording. Horner asks Athena questions, including really aged she is and wherever she goes to school, earlier stopping nan van and telling her they are going to “hang out.” Horner tells her to return disconnected her garment and she originates crying, and asks whether he’s a kidnapper.

She asks him: “Why are you doing this?” He replies, “Because you are pretty.”

“My mom says I can’t do that to somebody,” she tells him. “And you can’t do that to maine either.”

As nan recording, which lasts complete an hour, continues, Athena’s screams tin beryllium heard. At 1 constituent he tells her: “If you don’t unopen up, I will wounded you worse.”

A aesculapian examiner testified that Athena died of blunt unit injuries pinch smothering and strangulation.

While acknowledging during opening statements that nan grounds against Horner was “overwhelming” and “terrible,” Horner’s attorney, Steven Goble, told jurors that Horner’s mother drank while she was pregnant, that he has autism and suffered from “various intelligence illnesses passim his life” successful summation to being exposed to a “massive magnitude of lead.”

Goble had asked jurors to condemnation Horner to life successful prison.

Athena’s family has said that nan package Horner had dropped disconnected was a Christmas coming for her — a container of “You Can Be Anything” Barbies.

The proceedings was moved from agrarian Wise County to Fort Worth aft Horner’s attorneys based on that he would not person received a adjacent trial.

Stengle writes for nan Associated Press. AP writer Audrey McAvoy contributed to this study from Honolulu.