Ex-delivery driver sentenced to death for kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old girl in US

In the quiet ritual of a holiday delivery, a door opened and a child's life ended — not by accident, but by the deliberate act of a man trusted with access to the thresholds of family life. In May 2026, a Texas jury sentenced FedEx driver Tanner Horner to death for the kidnapping and murder of seven-year-old Athena Strand, a crime committed during a Christmas package drop in December. The case forces a reckoning not only with the darkness one person carried, but with the systems of trust that allowed him to stand at that door in the first place.