Former FedEx Driver Pleads Guilty to Killing 7-Year-Old Girl After Making Delivery at Her Texas Home

Former FedEx Driver Pleads Guilty to Killing 7-Year-Old Girl After Making Delivery at Her Texas Home
Attendees offer their respects at a makeshift memorial for Athena Strand after a memorial service in Paradise, Texas, on Dec. 6, 2022. Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News via AP
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DALLAS—A former FedEx driver pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing a 7-year-old girl after delivering a Christmas gift to her Texas home, where he told authorities he accidentally struck her with his van and then strangled her in a fit of panic.

Tanner Horner faces either the death penalty or life in prison in the 2022 killing of Athena Strand, whose body was found two days after she was reported missing in the rural town of Paradise, near Fort Worth. Jurors will now decide Horner’s punishment.