Small, tight-knit community comes together to keep Athena Strand's memory alive

Two days after the body of 7-year-old Athena Strand was found a few miles away from her Cottondale home, her small tight knit community is coming together to keep her memory alive and support her heartbroken family. It's hard to miss all of the pink spread throughout the community on the road heading from Boyd into Paradise. "We just wanted to show support for the Strand family. It's a tight knit community around here. Even though it's one town over, we're all family," said Heather King, a Boyd resident. King is just one of at least a dozen neighbors who traveled around town Sunday decorating with pink ribbons, balloons, and anything else pink they could find. Pink was Athena Strand's favorite color. Now the community is lit up in pink in memory of her.

"We're gonna focus on her and the good things and the love that she brought and we're not gonna focus on the tragedy," said King as she decorated a fence with Athena's name alongside another neighbor. Athena was first reported missing by her stepmother on Wednesday evening. Her body was found two days later on Friday after, investigators say, 31-year-old Fedex contract driver Tanner Horner confessed to abducting her from her Cottondale home and killing her. "This is not what we want our town to be remembered by. We're a loving community; we don't want this tattooed on our city," said King. Rod Townsend the superintendent of Paradise ISD, the district where Athena attended elementary school, said the district will have additional counselors available at the elementary and middle schools on Monday and that they will honor Athena at a later date.