A Collin County jury has delivered its verdict in the trial of Karmelo Anthony, who faced murder charges for fatally stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf during a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas, on April 2, 2025. Now he knows his fate.
The jury found Karmelo Anthony guilty of murder.
The facts of this case were never particularly complicated. Anthony, also 17 at the time, wandered under a tent belonging to Memorial High School during a rainy multi-school track meet at Kuykendall Stadium. He had no business being there. Multiple student athletes asked him to leave multiple times.
Anthony reportedly told students, “Touch me, and you’ll find out,” and “If you want me to move, you have to move me."
Austin Metcalf, by contrast, told him, "I'm not going to fight you at a track meet." Multiple witnesses testified that Metcalf had no interest in a physical confrontation. At least one witness said Anthony appeared to be "looking for a fight." Throughout the exchange, Anthony kept one hand inside his backpack. Some students thought he was bluffing. He wasn't.
Prosecutors called 21 witnesses who built a clear picture: Anthony escalated a verbal dispute into a deadly encounter by pulling a knife from his backpack and driving it into Austin Metcalf’s chest. After the stabbing, Anthony told a police officer, "I'm not alleged, I did it. He put his hands on me. I told him not to."
The defense bizarrely tried to spin all of that as self-defense, essentially asking jurors to believe that a teenager who invited physical contact with "touch me and you'll find out" and had brought a knife with him was somehow the victim.
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Some of the most gut-wrenching moments came from the teenage witnesses who knew Austin Metcalf. One held a football to steady his nerves on the stand. Another gripped a yellow stress ball. One witness, a football player and track athlete whose own father had been murdered in California, described Metcalf as "a football captain and mentor who believed in him." Austin's twin brother, Hunter, witnessed the stabbing and stayed with Austin in his final moments. Their father, Jeff Metcalf, said his son died in Hunter's arms.
Metcalf spoke to Fox News with a grace that most people couldn't summon under those circumstances. "Austin was the light of my life," he said. "This person made a bad choice and affected both his family and my family forever. I forgive the other person because the forgiveness is not for him; the forgiveness is for me so I can have peace. His life is destroyed. My life is destroyed."
Meanwhile, Anthony displayed zero remorse throughout this entire ordeal.
As my PJ Media colleague Catherine Salgado previously noted, Anthony carried himself throughout this trial with shameless confidence and not a trace of remorse. His family stood behind him with the same indifference. That didn't stop thousands of far-left activists from opening their wallets for them — a wealthy family that used money raised online to move into a nearly $1 million home and buy a new vehicle after their son stabbed a teenager to death at a track meet. Anthony's high school even handed him a diploma. The nerve of it all is staggering.
A fight broke out outside the courthouse following the verdict, which resulted in an immediate arrest.
Anthony could get life in prison.
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