Jurors at Tanner Horner’s murder trial on April 16, 2026, saw new video from inside his FedEx delivery truck showing him driving past Athena Strand’s home the day after she was murdered. The footage was captured on the afternoon of Dec. 1, 2022, while a huge search was underway for the 7-year-old, who had been missing for less than 24 hours.
The video showed Horner driving a residential country road lined with vehicles on both sides as he made deliveries near the Strand home. He became frustrated when a vehicle blocked the road and stopped, honking his horn. “I can't get through, there's people in the way,” Horner said, according to the footage, before a woman near the road told him there had been a kidnapping and that a 7-year-old had been taken.
She told him, “Um, you can pull up and try to ask them to get through, but there's been a kidnapping, so it's all blocked off. So you'll have to just pull up and ask them if they'll let you through, but a 7-year-old was taken.” The woman added, “That's what all this is for.” Law enforcement then allowed Horner to drive past after the blocking vehicle moved.
The video mattered because prosecutors used it to place Horner at the center of the search for Strand only a day after she disappeared, while jurors also heard what happened inside the truck when he strangled and killed her. Horner had already pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping last week, moments before the trial was set to begin, but he still faces the death penalty in the case, as laid out in earlier coverage of the plea and trial, including the reports on the guilty plea and the start of the Texas proceeding.
Horner had gone to Strand’s Wise County home on Nov. 30, 2022, while working as a delivery driver for a FedEx contractor to drop off a package containing a Christmas gift. He claimed he accidentally struck her with his truck while backing out of the driveway, said she was not seriously injured, and told investigators he panicked, placed her in his van and strangled her because he feared she would tell her father what had happened. Authorities found Strand’s body two days later about 9 miles away from her home, southeast of Boyd.
The judge did not allow the inside-the-truck video to be shown outside the courtroom, and prosecutors rested their case on April 16, 2026. What remains is not whether Horner caused Strand’s death; he has already admitted that. The open question is whether jurors will agree that the murder merits the state’s ultimate punishment.
