FedEx Driver Gets Death Penalty for 7-Year-Old Athena Strand Murder

A Tarrant County jury moved fast after Tanner Horner’s guilty plea, choosing death in less than three hours and closing a case that had already answered guilt but still left punishment to be decided. The FedEx driver, 34, was sentenced on May 5, 2026, for the 2022 capital murder and aggravated kidnapping of 7-year-old Athena Strand.

The sentencing hearing mattered because the plea did not end the case. Jurors had to weigh whether Horner would live out his sentence in prison or be executed, and prosecutors pushed hard for death. Wise County District Attorney James Stainton told jurors the only just outcome was execution, arguing that the facts of the case and the age of the victim placed it among the most serious child-murder cases a jury can hear.

Athena disappeared from her rural Wise County, Texas home on Nov. 30, 2022, after being reported missing from the family’s property near Paradise. Prosecutors said Horner abducted her while making a delivery, strangled her in his truck, and dumped her body. Authorities said her body was found two days later, on Dec. 2, 2022. The punishment phase brought out graphic evidence and recorded jail calls, material that left jurors emotional and underscored why prosecutors kept pursuing death instead of settling for life without parole.

Athena’s parents, Maitlyn Gandy and Jacob Strand, both took part in the punishment phase, adding the kind of human testimony that often turns the penalty phase in a capital case into a second, and very different, trial. CBS Texas described Gandy taking the stand as one of the most emotional moments in the proceeding, and Jacob Strand said his daughter’s death “broke” him. That testimony, combined with the disturbing evidence and Horner’s guilty plea, gave jurors a full picture of the loss before they returned their verdict.

Horner’s defense had argued against execution, saying his autism spectrum disorder should weigh against the death penalty. In the end, the jury rejected that argument and sided with prosecutors in a case that had stunned North Texas from the moment Athena vanished. For the Strand family, the penalty phase delivered the state’s harshest punishment, but it also showed how capital cases involving children are decided on more than guilt alone: jurors weigh the age of the victim, the brutality of the conduct, the defendant’s background, and whether the community believes any sentence short of death is enough.