The FedEx driver accused of abducting and killing a 7-year-old girl last week in Texas has told authorities he strangled her after accidentally hitting her with his van while making a delivery to her home, according to an arrest warrant obtained Thursday.
Tanner Lynn Horner, 31, told investigators that Athena Strand was not seriously injured after he kicked her while backing up, but he panicked and put her in his van. He said she was talking to him and told him her name, according to the warrant.
But Horner said he didn’t want her to tell her dad what happened, so he first tried to break the girl’s neck and when that didn’t work, he snapped her. strangled her with her hands in the back of the van, the warrant said. The warrant said Horner had taken investigators to where he left Athena’s body.
Athena was found dead on Dec. 2, two days after she was reported missing from her father and stepmother’s home in Paradise, a town of fewer than 500 people about 100 miles northwest of Dallas.
Horner was arrested last week for capital murder and aggravated kidnapping and remained in jail on Thursday with his bail set at $1.5 million. Prison records did not mention a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.
Athena’s mother, Maitlyn Gandy, spoke at a press conference Thursday outside the Wise County Courthouse in Decatur, about 10 miles northeast of Paradise. She said the package Horner dropped off that day was a Christmas present for the “amazing little girl” she wanted everyone to know.
“I was robbed of watching her grow up,” Gandy said as she stood next to the gift, a box of “You Can Be Anything” Barbies.
Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin said they knew early on that a delivery had been made to the girl’s home around the same time she went missing. Akin said she was killed about “an hour or so” after being kidnapped.
Working with employees of the contracting company that delivered packages for FedEx, investigators determined which van and driver made the delivery, according to the warrant. Investigators also learned that the van that delivered the package was equipped with video, according to the warrant.
An FBI employee who later watched the video from the van could see that the driver had taken a young girl who looked like Athena into the van and talked to her. The warrant stated that when investigators located Horner, he told them Athena was dead and confessed.
Gandy said Athena had to go home to Oklahoma after Christmas vacation.
“Now instead Athena will be cremated and she will come home to an urn because I’m not even, I’m not close to being ready to let my baby go,” she said.
Gandy said her daughter, who loved school and her first grade friends, “also loved dancing, singing and all the animals: dogs, cats, horses, lizards and chinchillas.”
She said Athena loved flowers and was also not afraid to “get in the mud with the boys”. “She was her father’s daughter,” Gandy said.
“I will never see his bright blue eyes or his unpleasant smile again,” Gandy said. “I will never be able to hear her say, ‘I love you, Mom’. I will never be able to do her hair or hold her while she sleeps again.
She thanked the community, saying they “flew into action” from the moment Athena disappeared and she saw people everywhere wearing pink in honor of her daughter. At a Tuesday night vigil in Paradise, many mourners gathered to remember that Athena wore pink.
“I’m asking everyone to hold your little ones a little tighter for me,” Gandy said.