VIDEO — Seven-Year-Old Athena Strand’s Killer Sentenced to Death: ‘You Will Face the Wrath of God’

Tanner Horner, the man who admitted he brutally murdered seven-year-old Athena Strand in Paradise, Texas, has been sentenced to death.

The jury’s sentence came after “less than three” hours of deliberation on Tuesday, Fox 4 reported. The jury said he is a threat to society even while he is behind bars, and there were “no mitigating circumstances to warrant the sentence of life in prison without parole rather than the death sentence,” the outlet continued.

Following the girl’s killing in late 2022, Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin said authorities would recommend the death penalty for Horner, who was a FedEx driver at the time he murdered her.

Horner later admitted to murdering the child and said he “tossed” her body when he disposed of it. He pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping after initially claiming he accidentally hit the child with his delivery truck when he was delivering a package to her father’s house, according to Breitbart News.

During his trial, jurors heard the audio and video recordings of the child’s brutal murder, and a clip showed Horner kidnapping her. He also covered the camera inside the truck and told her to remove her shirt. Audio of the torture Athena endured went on for over an hour, and reports said jurors were shaking and sobbing while they listened to it.

A photo taken inside the delivery truck showed Athena Strand kneeling as Horner drove the vehicle. At that point she appeared uninjured, which countered his initial claim that he had accidentally struck her with the vehicle before placing her inside it.

Regarding his death sentence, the New York Post reported, “Horner appeared utterly unmoved by the verdict – with not a flicker of emotion on his face as the judge said he’d die by lethal injection ‘before the hour of sunrise’ at a future date.”

The outlet noted Horner strangled the little girl to death and tried to blame his actions on an alter-ego named “Zero.” In addition, a forensic analyst said his DNA could not be excluded from swabs in the child’s sexual assault kit.

Once the verdict was heard, Strand’s uncle addressed the court and told Horner, “You will be judged. You will face the wrath of God,” adding he wanted Horner to know he was “nothing” and that Athena’s name would be remembered and celebrated forever.

Meanwhile, NBC 5 reported that “A sentence of death is automatically sent to the Texas Criminal Appeals Court. Having pled guilty to capital murder, Horner faced a punishment of either life in prison without parole or the death penalty.”