Prosecutors are asking for the death penalty on the Texas FedEx driver accused of kidnapping and strangling a seven-year-old girl while delivering her Barbie doll Christmas presents.

Tanner Lynn Horner, 31, has been arrested and charged with capital murder and aggravated kidnapping in the death of Athena Strand. Horner is currently being held in the Wise County Jail on $1.5 million bail.

Earlier this week, District Attorney James Stainton filed court documents in federal court informing the judge that he will seek the death penalty against Horner if found guilty of capital murder.

Under Texas law, the capital murder of a person under the age of ten qualifies the offender for the death penalty.

Horner confessed to the heinous crime while delivering gifts to the family’s North Texas home. He told investigators that he accidentally hit Athena with his truck on November 30, “panic” before grabbing her and putting her in the vehicle.

Fearing what would happen if he told her parents, he strangled her in the truck and dumped her body next to a country road seven miles from her home. She was found in Wise County, Texas on December 2, 2022 – just a few weeks before Christmas.

Athena Strand, 7, was kidnapped and strangled on November 30, 2022 by a hired FedEx employee who was delivering gifts to her family’s North Texas home

Tanner Lynn Horner, 31, has been arrested and charged with capital murder and aggravated kidnapping in the death of Athena Strand. Horner is currently being held at the Wise County Jail on $1.5 million bail

Horner was arrested on December 2, 2022, the same day Athena’s body was found. He confessed to police that he abducted and kidnapped the child during a delivery to her family’s home.

Earlier this week, District Attorney James Stainton (pictured) filed court documents in federal court informing the judge he will seek the death penalty against Horner if found guilty of capital murder

On February 17, a Wise County jury formally charged Horner with kidnapping and murdering the young girl.

Police have told prosecutors they want to seek the death penalty, according to NBC5. If convicted, Horner faces either execution or life imprisonment.

Strand’s mother, Maitlyn Gandy, released a statement on the charges.

“I would like to thank the Wise County Grand Jury for their role in this process. Learning the facts and circumstances surrounding the kidnapping and murder of my 7 year old daughter was undoubtedly very difficult for her.’

“I want them to know that their work is greatly appreciated,” she added. “The indictment of Tanner Horner is the beginning of a long journey through the justice system.

“I appreciate everyone’s continued support and for keeping Athena’s name and memory alive. Please take a moment to hug your children and loved ones. No one is promised another day.’

Horner was charged with the sexual abuse of a child nearly a decade ago and is facing three more child sexual abuse counts in Fort Worth in 2013. He is in prison on $1.5 million bail.

Athena’s father, Jacob Strand, has taken legal action against FedEx, claiming they did not conduct adequate background checks before hiring Horner.

“I support the death penalty. In every possible conviction,” Gandy told WFAA.

“Every breath he takes is one my daughter doesn’t take.

“If I could sit in front of him, I would tell him that he is nothing, but that Athena is absolutely everything – and I will make sure everyone in this world knows that he is nothing and that she is everything.”

Gandy says she wishes he had just driven away and let her daughter go.

“We are very forgiving people,” she said.

“If Athena hadn’t been injured or even had a few bruises and scrapes, he could have just driven away. We could have forgiven him.

“Accidents happen, but he chose to do more – and what he did was unforgivable.

“I have a hard time believing that Athena couldn’t have walked away. Athena could have just walked away and I wish he would have let her.”

Gandy says she’s still grieving for her daughter while still trying to care for her younger sister, Rilyn.

“I check my doors three times every night and hold my three year old tighter. I’m afraid to let her go. Everything is just very, very scary and very, very sad,” Gandy said through tears.

“It was tough for our family. For my other three year old. She doesn’t understand why she can’t call “sissy” or why she hasn’t come home yet. It’s a long time for her without seeing her sister,” she explains.

“We’ll manage. We try to function. It was long ago. Hard, but at the same time very messy.

‘I’m sad. I am angry. I’m confused. I give my best.

“I was very scared and I don’t sleep very often or for long periods. Noises at night scare me.”

Horner’s FedEx truck is pictured killing the little girl

The mother of seven-year-old Athena Strand, Maitlyn Gandy (right, Athena is center), has filed a wrongful death lawsuit

Athena was kidnapped by FedEx driver Tanner Horner on Nov. 30 from her father’s home in Paradise, Texas, police say

“I check my doors three times every night and hold my three year old tighter. I’m afraid to let her go. Everything is just very, very scary and very, very sad,” Gandy said through tears

Maitlyn Gandy posted photos of her eaten daughter Athena’s pink coffin on her Facebook page

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Biden administration on Friday declared its solidarity with Ukraine with new actions and strong words, imposed sweeping new sanctions on Moscow and approved a new $2 billion arms package to target Kiev a year after the Russian invasion to rearm.

Despite continued ambitious efforts by the US and its allies to strengthen the Ukrainians, there is no sign of an end to the war, which looks set to enter an even more complicated phase in the coming months.

On this somber anniversary, Biden and other leaders of the Group of Seven allies who have been on the front lines of support for Ukraine continued to focus on a united front.

“Our solidarity will never waver in standing with Ukraine, supporting countries and people in need and upholding the international order based on the rule of law,” G-7 leaders said in a joint statement after a virtual meeting President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

As Ukraine mourned its war dead and vowed it would ultimately emerge victorious, the Pentagon unveiled its latest weapons package. It includes more ammunition, electronic warfare detection equipment and other weapons to counter Russia’s unmanned systems, as well as several types of drones, including the upgraded Switchblade 600 kamikaze attack drone.

The latest aid package uses the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to fund longer-term contracts to purchase arms and equipment. Unlike the Presidential Withdrawal Authority, which the Pentagon has used repeatedly over the past year to pull weapons from its own stockpiles and ship them quickly to Ukraine, it could take a year or two for the USAI-funded equipment to arrive the front arrives. As a result, preparing for an expected new offensive in the spring will do little to help Ukraine.

“Difficult times may lie ahead, but let’s see clearly what is at stake in Ukraine,” said US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, “to ensure that a world of rules and rights is not replaced by a world of tyranny and… of the riot is replaced. ”

Meanwhile, the White House said new sanctions, affecting over 200 people and entities, “will further damage Russia’s economy and reduce its ability to wage war on Ukraine.” The Biden administration will also further restrict exports to Russia and increase tariffs on some Russian products imported into the US

“Now not only does Ukraine stand, but the global coalition in support of Ukraine is stronger than ever, anchored by the G7,” Biden said on Twitter after Friday’s virtual meeting with Zelenskyy.

However, as the conflict enters its second year, there are no signs that President Vladimir Putin will withdraw from the conflict. And the avalanche of international sanctions that have been steadily hoisted against Moscow over the past year have yet to deal the knockout blow to the Russian economy that the White House – and independent economists – predicted at the start of the war.

Russia’s economy weathered sanctions better than expected in 2022, partly due to “the slow implementation of commodity sanctions,” according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service on Friday.

The Russian economy is expected to weaken in 2023, with GDP set to contract by 3% this year, according to Moody’s forecast. The economy shrank 2.2% in 2022, well short of forecasts of 15% or more that Biden administration officials made earlier in the war. Export controls and financial sanctions are gradually eroding Russia’s industrial capacity, but oil and other energy exports over the past year have allowed Putin to continue funding the war.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that Russia’s economy “is showing some resilience,” but he also said it’s not clear it “can be sustained over the long term.”

Of Putin, he said: “He had to take some drastic measures to support his economy and his currency, including playing quite aggressively with interest rates, for example.”

The new sanctions, introduced by the US Treasury Department on Friday, hit Russian firms, banks, manufacturers and individuals, targeting companies that have helped Russia dodge previous rounds. Russia’s metals and mining sector is among those targeted in what the Treasury Ministry called one of the “most significant sanctions actions yet.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, attending meetings with other finance chiefs from the Group of 20 top economies in India on Friday, called out Russian officials in attendance and insisted the world’s biggest economies must do more to support Ukraine.

“I urge Russian officials here at the G-20 to understand that by continuing to work for the Kremlin, they are complicit in Putin’s atrocities,” Yellen said. “They bear responsibility for the lives and livelihoods being taken in Ukraine and for the damage being caused around the world.”

The US Departments of State and Commerce and the Office of the US Trade Representative also issued plans on Friday to increase pressure on Russia. These moves impose visa restrictions on 1,219 Russian military personnel, increase tariffs on Russian products including around $2.8 billion worth of metal, and add nearly 90 Russian and third-country companies, including those from China, to a list of identified sanctions violators.

More than 30 countries, representing more than half of the global economy, have already imposed sanctions on Russia, making it the most heavily sanctioned nation in the world.

The sanctions have imposed price caps on Russian oil and diesel, frozen Central Bank funds and restricted access to SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.

The US and its allies have directly sanctioned about 2,500 Russian companies, government officials, oligarchs and their families. The sanctions deprive them of access to their American bank accounts and financial markets, and prevent them from doing business with Americans, traveling to the US, and more.

On Friday afternoon, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, an international body setting standards on illicit finance, barred Russia from its membership. The removal occurred for the first time in the body’s 34-year history.

Britain also announced new sanctions on Friday against firms supplying Russia’s battlefield equipment and says it will ban the export to Russia of all items it used in the war, such as aircraft parts, radios and electronic components of weapons.

“We think the job is far from done,” said UK CFO Jeremy Hunt.

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Associated Press reporters Tara Copp and Aamer Madhani in Washington, Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

Thousands of demonstrators marched across Europe on Friday to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A year after the start of the war, a destroyed Russian tank was displayed in front of the embassy in Berlin, the gun aimed at the entrance.

From the UK to the Baltics, leaders from across Europe attended the ceremonies to show their unwavering support for Ukraine and to commemorate the victims of the conflict.

The crowd fell silent for a minute on Freedom Square in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met to commemorate the dead.

In London, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also observed a minute’s silence outside Downing Street before the Ukrainian anthem was sung by two singers wearing traditional Ukrainian shirts.

– A tank in the middle of Berlin –

In the German capital, which remained a symbol of the Cold War with the Wall cutting through it for almost 28 years, thirteen demonstrations were held, bringing together thousands of people: eleven for Ukraine, one against arms supplies and one for peace.

The largest of them, organized under the motto “We will never forget”, had around 8,000 participants, according to a police spokeswoman.

At the Berlin International Film Festival, a demonstration of solidarity with Ukraine brought dozens of film personalities together on the red carpet, including the president of the jury, American star Kristen Stewart, who waved Ukrainian flags and signs in the colors of Ukraine.

In West Germany, between the cities of Osnabrück and Munster, around 18,000 people formed a human chain for peace and held hands for minutes.

In the morning, in the heart of the German capital, just a few steps from the Brandenburg Gate, passers-by could see a Russian tank that activists had towed away during the night to place it in front of the Russian embassy.

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This unusual image had attracted many curious on Friday morning, including classes visiting schools.

“We drove by and saw a crowd, it’s strange to see a tank like that,” Allen Eapen, a 22-year-old Indian man studying in the city, in the middle of Berlin, told AFP.

The 1985 T-72 B1 tank was probably destroyed by a mine on March 31, 2022 near Boutcha in the Kiev suburbs. Some of the chains are crushed, as is the turret, partially pulverized.

The Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, Oleksiï Makeyev, went to the place where the wreck is located at noon.

– From Bucharest to London –

In Bucharest, a few hundred people, mostly Ukrainians and many children, marched to the Russian embassy shouting: “Crimea is Ukrainian!”, “Terrorist Russia!” or “Stop the war!”.

Thousands gathered in Sofia on Friday in front of the Bulgarian Presidency building and waved yellow and blue flags.

Demonstrations also took place in Warsaw and Bern, while diplomats from around 30 countries gathered in close proximity to the United Nations in Geneva, also as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was illuminated in yellow and blue colors on Thursday evening, as were the European Commission and Parliament buildings in Brussels, or the National Theater in Warsaw and the Place d’Armes in the heart of Luxembourg.

Hundreds of people gathered in the French capital on Friday night to pay tribute to the “heroic” resistance of the Ukrainian people.

In Marseille, France’s second largest city, several hundred people gathered in front of City Hall in a cloud of Ukrainian flags with signs reading “All the world stands with Ukraine” (“Everyone supports Ukraine”).

This meeting took place not far from the anchorage of the Ukrainian city of Odessa and was relocated to the Old Port for a year to commemorate the twinning of the two port cities.

Shortly before, a hundred people had gathered near the Place du Capitole in Toulouse, a twin city of Kiev. Other demonstrations took place across France, from Strasbourg in the east to Lille in the north.

In London, gallons of paint were dumped outside the Russian embassy to repaint the street in Ukrainian colours, and hundreds of Britons descended on Trafalgar Square to mark the occasion.

mat-clp/bds/dth

In a fit of insanity, he enters the cockpit while the plane is in the air to ask for a drink, forcing it to make an emergency landing. It happened in North Carolina, USA. The American Airlines flight had taken off from Jacksonville (Florida) and was heading for Washington. The flight was diverted to Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

Marco Eletti, former candidate of “L’Eredità”, sentenced to 24 years and two months: he killed his father with hammers

Pupils beaten in Florence, league points finger at rector: “She ran for the Democratic Party in 2009”

Investigate the FBI

The perpetrator’s name is Tiffany Miles, a 36-year-old woman who was arrested after landing and released on bail, reports CNN. In communications with the control tower, the pilots said the woman tried to break through the cockpit and was somehow stopped by the crew and some passengers. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), it violently loaded the cockpit door.

When questioned by police, she said she was angry that she hadn’t been served her drink. A man, startled and concerned about what was happening, got up and chased the woman, who by now had become angry. The FBI is investigating the case.

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