Athena Strand’s mother has paid a heartbreaking tribute to her ‘beautiful princess’ after she was abducted and killed by a FedEx driver in Texas.
Mourning mother Maitlyn Gandy said her seven-year-old daughter Athena was kidnapped and murdered by a ‘sick, cruel monster’ for no apparent reason just hours after Tanner Horner, 31, admitted to the twisted crime.
Strand was discovered dead on Friday night, and investigators believe she died ‘within an hour’ of being kidnapped from her family’s driveway in Paradise, Texas.
She’d been visiting her father and stepmother in Texas and was about to return to her mother in Oklahoma for Christmas.
Tanner Lynn Horner, a 31-year-old aspiring musician from Lake Worth, confessed to kidnapping and murdering Athena. Horner is 6-foot-3 and weighs 220 pounds, according to jail records.
The mother stated that she did not want her daughter to be known as the girl who was murdered and “discarded by a monster.”
Wise County Authorities acted in a tip which led to this search of a Fed Ex Truck driven by 31yo Tanner Lynn Horner now charged in abduction & murder of 7yo Athena Strand who went missing 2 days ago. (Video: Bobby Dean) @wfaa @HowertonNews @adealbaWFAA @WFAAJayWallis pic.twitter.com/IZD17NYcLA
— Scoop Jefferson (@scoopjefferson) December 3, 2022
Gandy’s heartbreaking remarks come as a Texas woman claims Tanner Horner raped her when she was 16 in 2014. Shay Marie, a 23-year-old Texas woman, has publicly and repeatedly stated on social media that Horner raped her in 2014. Marie’s friend stated on social media that she did report the rape to authorities.
Shay Marie shared a series of screenshots of text conversations she had with friends and Horner’s then-girlfriend in 2018. In a November 2019 Facebook post, the victim stated, ‘Friendly reminder that Tanner Horner is a rapist.’
In another post from September of last year, the woman stated that she was now 23, and the man who assaulted her when she was 16. She said that they had been “friends,” and he had tried to persuade her to date him, but she declined. She said that they remained “friends” until he was able to get her drunk enough to take advantage of her.
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