The mother of Athena Strand stared daggers at her daughter’s killer at his sentencing hearing Wednesday – describing how she had to hide the bruises he left on her neck, as she vowed to keep her memory alive.
“I had to cover up hand print bruises around my daughter’s neck,” mom Maitlyn Gandy told a Texas court Wednesday, when asked why she’d been to nearly hearing for her 7-year-old girl’s murder.
“And because she no longer has a voice. And I want people to know that she’s not just some story. She’s not just some number. She’s not just some picture you see in a headline,” she said.
Gandy stared down little Athena’s confessed killer, former FedEx driver Tanner Horner, who sat meekly across the courtroom as she spoke.
“She was loved. She is loved. And she is missed, and she was real, and she had a life, and she wanted to live,” Gandy said. “I will be her face, and I will be her voice, and I will make sure that every single person in this works knows that that she is loved, and that she wanted to live, and we want her in our lives.”
The hearing comes as the judge deliberates Horner’s fate after he pleaded guilty to the vile 2022 killing last week.
Here’s the latest on killer FedEx driver who murdered 7-year-old Athena Strand:
He faces the death penalty or life in prison.
Horner claimed her hit accidentally hit Athena with his FedEx truck while delivering a package to her family’s Ft. Worth-area home, and that he strangled her out of fear that she’d tell her parents about the incident.
But prosecutors didn’t buy Horner’s version of events that came with the confession – especially since footage from inside his FedEx truck showed him driving off with the girl while she appeared to be in perfect health.
He was also heard threatening to kill the girl if she didn’t keep quiet.