How the worst of trucking failed Athena Strand

Athena Presley Monroe Strand was born May 23, 2015, in Duncan, Oklahoma. She was seven years old when she was killed. She was a first-grader at Paradise Elementary School who made friends, her family said, as easily as a butterfly flaps its wings. She loved horseback riding. She loved doing makeup. She loved being a princess.

She had an ever-present smile that people who knew her said lit up every room she walked into. She had three sisters. She had grandparents and great-grandparents and a whole family who loved her and who have spent every day since November 30, 2022, learning to live in a world she is no longer part of. Her mother Maitlyn. Her father Jacob.

Her sisters Rilyn, Yrsa and Alice. None of them will ever see her again because a delivery driver put her in the back of a van and strangled her in a field outside Boyd, Texas, and left her there. Her last school journal entry was about stranger danger.

Tanner Horner pleaded guilty this week to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping in a Tarrant County courtroom. The trial has moved into the punishment phase. The jury will decide whether he lives or dies.

Whatever they decide, nothing they hear in that courtroom over the coming days will be more important than the question nobody in the trucking industry wants to answer honestly. How did this man ever get behind the wheel of a commercial vehicle going to people’s homes in the first place. What happened?

Horner was delivering a package to the Strand family home on the evening of Nov. 30, 2022. The package contained Barbie dolls. A Christmas present for a 7-year-old girl. He reportedly backed his delivery van into Athena’s driveway. By his own account, she was not seriously injured. What happened next has no rational explanation and no redemption.

Horner put her in the back of the van, drove to a private road and strangled her.

He then misled investigators for hours, making up a detailed story about a green Astro van he claimed to have seen leaving the scene, sending law enforcement chasing a ghost while Athena’s family, neighbors, sheriff’s deputies, Texas Rangers, game wardens and roughly 300 citizens searched shoulder to shoulder across Wise County for a little girl who was already dead.

Investigators used delivery records, cell tower data and digital evidence from the van to identify and arrest Horner the same evening. Two days later, after he finally led investigators to where he left her, Athena’s body was found approximately 10 miles from her home.

This week’s testimony has added layers to this case that go well beyond what the public knew at the time of the arrest. Investigators testified that throughout interrogations, Horner repeatedly referenced an alternate persona he called “Zero,” describing his actions as feeling like a dream or an out-of-body experience he said he had felt his entire life.

When investigators addressed “Zero” directly, his demeanor changed. His head tilted. His eyes rolled back. He used that persona to deflect and manipulate through multiple interview sessions, claiming at one point that if he said too much, Zero would hurt him.

Surveillance footage from inside the delivery van was played for jurors, showing Athena alive and uninjured in the back of the truck after he took her. Prosecutors confirmed DNA evidence of sexual assault.

The Wise County District Attorney’s opening statement included a detail that should stay with every parent and every person who has ever ordered a package for home delivery. The first thing Horner said to Athena after he placed her in that truck was: “Don’t scream or I’ll hurt you.” He said it twice.

He was also charged shortly after his arrest with three unrelated counts of child sexual assault in Tarrant County stemming from incidents alleged to have occurred in 2013. Those charges were not separately prosecuted, given the capital murder case.

A woman also came forward to police after his arrest and alleged he had sexually assaulted her when she was 16. That allegation is documented in arrest affidavit records that surfaced during this week’s testimony.

The defense is asking the jury for a life sentence without parole, citing a claimed autism diagnosis and suggesting brain damage and mental illness as factors. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Who actually hired and employed Tanner Horner? Tanner Horner was not a FedEx employee. He was not hired by FedEx.

FedEx Ground operates through a network of more than 6,000 independent service providers, contractors who hire their own employees, own or lease their own vehicles and operate under FedEx branding. The company that hired Tanner Horner was Big Topspin Inc.

, a Fort Worth-based independent contractor that held the delivery routes covering Wise County, including Springtown, Paradise, Poolville, Bridgeport and Runaway Bay. Paradise is where Athena Strand lived. Big Topspin was delivered to her door. Big Topspin Inc. was incorporated in the state of Texas on April 29, 2022. Tanner Horner