DALLAS — A former FedEx driver was sentenced to loss of life on Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to killing a 7-year-old woman he took from her Texas dwelling whereas delivering a Christmas present.
Jurors in a Fort Price courtroom selected Tanner Horner’s punishment after listening to a couple of month of testimony and proof that included audio of Athena Strand’s final moments from inside his supply van. Horner, 34, pleaded responsible to capital homicide final month within the 2022 killing simply as his trial started. Athena’s body was found two days after she was reported lacking from her dwelling within the rural city of Paradise, close to Fort Price.
Horner did not visibly react when the choose learn the sentence, in accordance with a livestream of the court docket proceedings.
Jurors discovered there was a likelihood Horner would commit felony violence and be a seamless menace to society. They mentioned there was nothing within the fee of the crime or in Horner’s background to warrant life with out parole as a substitute of loss of life.
Prosecutor James Stainton instructed jurors in opening statements that Horner had instructed, “lie upon lie upon lie upon lie” within the case, together with telling authorities that he by chance struck Athena together with his van whereas making the supply after which killed her in a match of panic.
A number of jurors cried as they have been proven video and heard audio from contained in the van after Athena was taken. He may very well be seen lifting her into the van, after which driving away, telling her to not scream or he’d damage her.
Horner then lined the digicam, however the audio continued recording. Horner asks Athena questions, together with how outdated she is and the place she goes to high school, earlier than stopping the van and telling her they will “hang around.” Horner tells her to take off her shirt and she or he begins crying, and asks whether or not he’s a kidnapper.
She asks him: “Why are you doing this?” He replies, “Since you are fairly.”
“My mother says I can’t do this to any person,” she tells him. “And you’ll’t do this to me both.”
Because the recording, which lasts over an hour, continues, Athena’s screams might be heard. At one level he tells her: “For those who don’t shut up, I’ll damage you worse.”
A medical expert testified that Athena died of blunt drive accidents with smothering and strangulation.
Whereas acknowledging throughout opening statements that the proof in opposition to Horner was “overwhelming” and “horrible,” Horner’s legal professional, Steven Goble, instructed jurors that Horner’s mom drank whereas she was pregnant, that he has autism and suffered from “numerous psychological sicknesses all through his life” along with being uncovered to a “large quantity of lead.”
Goble had requested jurors to condemn Horner to life in jail.
Athena’s household has mentioned that the package deal Horner had dropped off was a Christmas current for her — a field of “You Can Be Something” Barbies.
The trial was moved from rural Clever County to Fort Price after Horner’s attorneys argued that he wouldn’t have acquired a good trial. ____
Related Press author Audrey McAvoy contributed to this report from Honolulu.
