The FedEx driver accused of abducting and killing a 7-year-old girl final week in Texas instructed authorities that he strangled her after by chance hitting her together with his van whereas making a supply at her residence, in keeping with an arrest warrant obtained Thursday.
Tanner Lynn Horner, 31, instructed investigators that Athena Strand wasn’t critically damage after he hit her whereas backing up, however he panicked and put her in his van. He stated she was speaking to him and instructed him her identify, in accordance the warrant.
The warrant stated Horner took investigators to the place he’d left Athena’s physique.
Athena was discovered lifeless on Dec. 2, two days after she was reported lacking from the house of her father and stepmother in Paradise, a city of fewer than 500 individuals about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Dallas.
Horner remained jailed Thursday on costs of capital homicide and aggravated kidnapping. His bond is about at on $1.5 million. Jail data didn’t checklist an legal professional who may communicate on his behalf.
Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin has stated that they knew early on {that a} supply had been made on the girl’s residence at about the identical time that she disappeared. Akin has stated she was killed about “an hour or so” after being kidnapped.
Athena’s mom, Maitlyn Gandy, spoke at an emotional news convention on Thursday exterior Wise County courthouse in Decatur, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) northeast of Paradise. She stated that she wished everybody to know concerning the “amazing little girl” who would have obtained the Christmas current that driver dropped off the day she disappeared.
“I was robbed of watching her grow up,” stated Gandy as she stood beside the current, a field of “You Can Be Anything” Barbies.
Gandy stated that Athena had been set to return residence to her in Oklahoma after Christmas break.
“Now, instead, Athena will be cremated and she will come home in an urn because I’m not even, I’m not anywhere close to being ready to let my baby go,” she stated.
Gandy stated her daughter, who cherished college and her mates in the primary grade, additionally “loved dancing, singing and all animals: dogs, cats, horses, lizards and chinchillas.”
She said Athena loved flowers, and also wasn’t afraid to get “down in the mud with the boys.” “She was her father’s daughter,” Gandy stated.
“I’ll by no means see her vibrant blue eyes or her ornery smile once more,” Gandy said. “I will never be able to hear her say, ‘I love you, Mommy.’ I will never be able to do her hair again or to hold her while she sleeps.”
She thanked the community, saying they “flew into action” from the moment Athena went missing and she’s been seeing people everywhere wearing pink in her daughter’s honor. At a vigil Tuesday evening in Paradise, lots of the mourners gathered to recollect Athena wore pink.
“I ask everyone to hold your littles just a little tighter for me,” Gandy stated.
Gandy was joined on the news convention by her legal professional, Benson Varghese, who stated they have been trying into anybody “involved in the decisions that were made that led to this tragic loss.”
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