A black teenager was convicted of murder on June 9 in the fatal stabbing of a white peer in Texas, in a case that inflamed racial tensions and brought competing demonstrations to the courthouse grounds.
The defendant, Karmelo Anthony, now 19, stabbed Austin Metcalf after an altercation at a track meet in April 2025 in Frisco, Texas, an affluent Dallas suburb, on a rainy day. Both were 17 at the time.
Witnesses said that Anthony, who attended Centennial High School, sought shelter in a tent belonging to Memorial High School, Metcalf’s team, and was asked repeatedly to leave.
Anthony reportedly grabbed his backpack, reached inside, and said, “Touch me and see what happens.” One witness told the police that Metcalf had pushed Anthony to get him to leave the tent.
Anthony took out a pocketknife and stabbed Metcalf in the chest. He died while cradled by his twin brother, Hunter.
The case unleashed a torrent of disinformation, harassment and death threats that targeted both families involved. The judge who lowered Anthony’s bond to US$250,000 (S$322,000), allowing him to go free while awaiting trial, was also targeted. A group called Protect White Americans demonstrated at the stadium where Metcalf died.
The Anthonys were falsely accused of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars that were donated to a legal defence fund on a house and car, while false stories spread that the victim had died of a drug overdose. The families were doxxed and swatted. Far-right influencers called for Anthony to be executed.
“Before knowing the facts of the case, I knew the racialised aspects of the case,” said Jonathan Reid, a criminologist and sociology professor at Texas A&M University, noting the flood of attention on social media platforms.
Appearing on Fox News, Jeff Metcalf, Austin Metcalf’s father, admonished those who had injected racial animus into the case. “Do not turn this into a racial thing – it was not. Do not politicise this – it’s not,” he said. “This was a human being thing. This person made a bad choice and it affected both his family and my family forever.”
According to their families, both teenagers excelled in school and sports. Metcalf was the most valuable player of his football team. Anthony was the captain of both his track and football teams.
From the beginning, Anthony did not deny that he had stabbed Metcalf, but maintained that he had done so in self-defence. “I was protecting myself,” he told the police as he held his hands in the air during his arrest, according to the police report. “He put his hands on me.”
During the eight-day trial, his lawyers argued that he should be acquitted, emphasising that Metcalf was far larger than Anthony was.
The prosecutor, Bill Wirskye, asked why Anthony had brought a knife to a track meet. “You don’t get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoked the shove,” he said.
The jury apparently put little stock in the self-defence argument, deliberating for less than three hours before finding Anthony guilty of murder. The jury could have instead convicted him of the lesser offence of manslaughter.
The sentencing phase of the trial began on the afternoon of June 9. During that phase, the jury was asked to consider whether Anthony had committed a crime of “sudden passion”, which would reduce his potential sentence from between five and 99 years to between two and 20 years.
Outside the courthouse after the verdict was read, protesters had gathered. Some toted signs calling for justice for Metcalf, while others called for Anthony’s freedom.
Chris King, who identified himself as a lawyer from out of state, repeated a frequent criticism made by Anthony’s supporters: That the prosecutors had struck three black women from the jury, leaving the jury with no black members.
Samuel Hall, who said he was the founder and president of United Patriots for America, thought the verdict was fair. “Personally, I hope he does not get the rest of his life in prison,” he said. “I think he should get an appropriate sentence.” NYTIMES
