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DALLAS (AP) — A erstwhile FedEx operator was sentenced to decease connected Tuesday aft helium pleaded blameworthy to sidesplitting a 7-year-old miss helium took from her Texas location portion delivering a Christmas gift.
Jurors successful a Fort Worth courtroom decided connected Tanner Horner's punishment aft proceeding astir a period of grounds and grounds that included audio of Athena Strand's past moments from wrong his transportation van. Horner, 34, pleaded blameworthy to superior execution past period successful the 2022 sidesplitting conscionable arsenic his proceedings began. Athena's assemblage was recovered 2 days aft she was reported missing from her location successful the agrarian municipality of Paradise, adjacent Fort Worth.
Horner didn't visibly respond erstwhile the justice work the sentence, according to a livestream of the tribunal proceedings.
Jurors recovered determination was a probability Horner would perpetrate transgression unit and beryllium a continuing menace to society. They said determination was thing successful the committee of the transgression oregon successful Horner's inheritance to warrant beingness without parole alternatively of death.
Prosecutor James Stainton told jurors successful opening statements that Horner had told, “lie upon prevarication upon prevarication upon lie” successful the case, including telling authorities that helium accidentally struck Athena with his van portion making the transportation and past killed her successful a acceptable of panic.
Several jurors cried arsenic they were shown video and heard audio from wrong the van aft Athena was taken. He could beryllium seen lifting her into the van, and past driving away, telling her not to shriek oregon he’d wounded her.
Horner past covered the camera, but the audio continued recording. Horner asks Athena questions, including however aged she is and wherever she goes to school, earlier stopping the van and telling her they are going to “hang out.” Horner tells her to instrumentality disconnected her garment and she begins crying, and asks whether he’s a kidnapper.
She asks him: “Why are you doing this?” He replies, “Because you are pretty.”
“My ma says I can’t bash that to somebody,” she tells him. “And you can’t bash that to maine either.”
As the recording, which lasts implicit an hour, continues, Athena’s screams tin beryllium heard. At 1 constituent helium tells her: “If you don’t unopen up, I volition wounded you worse.”
A aesculapian examiner testified that Athena died of blunt unit injuries with smothering and strangulation.
While acknowledging during opening statements that the grounds against Horner was “overwhelming” and “terrible,” Horner’s attorney, Steven Goble, told jurors that Horner’s parent drank portion she was pregnant, that helium 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 beingness successful prison.
Athena’s household has said that the bundle Horner had dropped disconnected was a Christmas contiguous 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 argued that helium would not person received a just trial. ____
Associated Press writer Audrey McAvoy contributed to this study from Honolulu.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.
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