Former FedEx driver pleads guilty to killing 7-year-old girl after making delivery at her Texas home

FORT WORTH, Texas — Tanner Lynn Horner, a former contract delivery driver for FedEx, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the 2022 capital murder and aggravated kidnapping of 7-year-old Athena Strand, a move that abruptly shifted the proceedings into a high-stakes punishment phase where jurors will decide between life imprisonment and the death penalty.

Horner, 34, entered the plea in a Tarrant County courtroom as his trial was set to begin. The case was moved to Fort Worth from neighboring Wise County last year after defense attorneys argued that pretrial publicity would prevent a fair trial in the community where the girl disappeared.

Following the guilty plea, Tarrant County Judge George Gallagher moved immediately into the sentencing portion of the trial. Prosecutors, led by Wise County District Attorney James Stainton, are seeking the death penalty, arguing that Horner’s actions were calculated and predatory.

In opening statements for the punishment phase, Stainton characterized Horner as a man who "brought violence, fear, and death" to a rural Paradise, Texas, property on Nov. 30, 2022. Prosecutors challenged the initial narrative provided by Horner during his 2022 confession, in which he claimed he accidentally struck the girl with his delivery van and panicked.

Stainton told the jury that evidence, including a photo taken inside the van, suggests Athena was unharmed when Horner forced her into the vehicle. Prosecutors also revealed they possess audio recordings from the van in which Horner can be heard telling the child, "Don’t scream or I’ll hurt you," before strangling her.

"You're going to hear what a 256-pound man can do to a 67-pound child," Stainton told the jury.

The defense team, led by attorneys Susan Anderson and Steven Goble, urged jurors to consider Horner’s history of autism and mental illness. In their opening remarks, they described a "troubled upbringing" marked by parental substance abuse and a lack of access to mental health services until adulthood. They have filed dozens of motions arguing that Horner’s autism reduces his moral blameworthiness, drawing parallels to Eighth Amendment protections that prohibit the execution of the intellectually disabled.

The first day of testimony included emotional accounts from Athena’s stepmother, Ashley Strand, and her elementary school teacher, Lindsey Thompson. Strand testified that the girl had moved to the Wise County home in May 2022 after her mother became ill. She described the day of the disappearance as a typical afternoon that turned into a nightmare when Athena failed to return to the house for dinner.

Thompson, who described Athena as a "true gem" and a "typical 7-year-old," testified about the girl’s love for drawing and her kindness toward other students.

Athena’s disappearance on Nov. 30, 2022, triggered a massive three-day search involving hundreds of volunteers and multiple law enforcement agencies. Her body was discovered on Dec. 2, 2022, in a creek about nine miles from her home. Digital evidence from the FedEx truck and the delivery manifest helped investigators track Horner's movements on the day of the abduction.

The case has already had a legislative impact in Texas. In 2023, Governor Greg Abbott signed "Athena’s Law," which created the Athena Alert. The system allows law enforcement to bypass certain federal requirements for an Amber Alert, enabling immediate localized notifications within a 100-mile radius when a child is reported missing but before a kidnapping is officially confirmed.

The punishment phase is expected to last up to three weeks as jurors weigh the aggravating factors of the crime against the mitigating evidence presented by the defense. Because Horner has pleaded guilty to capital murder, the only two sentencing options available to the jury under Texas law are life in prison without the possibility of parole or death by lethal injection.

Source: DPN, News outlets,Staff, AI, April 7, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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