A chilling new photo shows 7-year-old Athena Strand moments before she was strangled and dumped into a river by a twisted FedEx driver who allegedly abducted her from her Texas home while delivering her Christmas present.
The disturbing image of the terrified youngster in the back of the delivery van was revealed in a Fort Worth courtroom Tuesday morning after 34-year-old Tanner Horner unexpectedly pleaded guilty to capital murder of a child under 10 and aggravated kidnapping for the November 2022 slaying.
The shocking plea came as his murder trial was set to kick off. Jurors will now decide if the killer FedEx driver will be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole.
“Now your sole duty will be to listen to all of the evidence that is going to be presented to you because you will be using that evidence to determine the proper punishment to be assessed,” Judge George Gallagher told the jury.
Prosecutors revealed the eerie black-and-white security image showing Athena alive and on her knees behind the driver’s seat of the delivery truck on the day of the deadly Nov. 30, 2022, kidnapping.
The snap, taken from a camera inside the van, showed Horner calmly driving and whistling as the petrified child stared straight ahead – a detail prosecutors argued debunks the frantic account he gave police.
Horner said he had grabbed the young girl and tossed her into his delivery van in a moment of panic after accidentally backing into her outside her father’s home in Paradise, Texas, on Nov. 30, 2022, according to an arrest warrant.
Athena was not seriously injured, but Horner allegedly decided to kill her out of fear that she would tell her father about the accident.
“She was very much alive and uninjured when he put her in the truck,” Wise County District Attorney James Stainton told jurors at the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center in Fort Worth.
“The first thing he said to her was, ‘Don’t scream or I’ll hurt you.’ That’s the first thing out of his mouth. He made good on it.”
He told police he tried unsuccessfully to break her neck before strangling her with his bare hands in the FedEx truck and dumping her body in the Trinity River, roughly 10 miles from her house, the warrant said.
Police tracked down Horner after they discovered he had delivered a package — a set of “You Can Be Anything” Barbie dolls intended as a Christmas gift for Athena — to the house shortly before the girl’s disappearance, her devastated family revealed.
The killer FedEx worker led police to Athena’s body two days after her stepmother reported her missing.
Prosecutors will reportedly play jurors horrifying audio of the moment Horner – who allegedly covered the in-cab camera – strangled the 67-pound child to death inside his delivery truck.
“You’re going to hear what a 250-pound man can do to a 67-pound child,” Stainton said, adding that Athena “fought with the strength of 100 men.”
“It’s horrible. One thing you can’t unhear is the level of fight in a 7-year-old girl when she’s facing certain death. This is the level of cold heartedness that you’re going to see.”
