Texas jury finds Karmelo Anthony guilty of murder

MCKINNEY, Texas (CN) — A Texas jury found Karmelo Anthony guilty of murder Tuesday in the stabbing death of an unarmed white teenager at a suburban track meet.

Anthony, 19, of Frisco, audibly sobbed when the verdict was read. His parents immediately left the courtroom. He faces between five years and 99 years or life in state prison on the first-degree murder conviction for the death of Austin Metcalf, 17. Jurors deliberated for only three hours, declining to convict on the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Anthony had steadfastly claimed he stabbed Metcalf in self-defense after he was told to leave and shoved in a Memorial High School tent at a rainy track meet on April 2, 2025. Anthony was a student at Centennial High School, which did not have a tent at the meet when the rain began.

Defense attorney Mike Howard told jurors during closing arguments that Metcalf and his twin brother Hunter had the right to tell Anthony to leave the tent but had “no legal right to put his hands” on him.

“Karmelo is in a public place,” Howard said. “Austin had had no legal right to use force to eject Karmelo from the tent.”

Howard disputed prosecution claims that Anthony was not invited to the tent, that he was friends with one of the people there who dapped him up.

“These guys [the Metcalfs] are much bigger than you,” he said. “Do you turn your back and walk away and take a chance with their raging hormones?”

Howard also questioned the allegiance of the student witnesses the prosecution called to testify, reminding jurors they were all Memorial students.

“We should be on guard for bias because of course they would,” he said. “Austin was their leader.”

Howard told jurors his client had an “absolute right to defend himself” in the situation.

“How do you know in a split second of chaos when it is too late?” he asked. “If you wait too long to defend yourself, self-defense is meaningless.”

Collin County First Assistant District Attorney Bill Wirskye wondered during his closing argument why Anthony did not just walk away from the confrontation, that there were other tents at the meet. He argued Anthony does “not get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoke” the contact. He reminded jurors of witness testimony stating Metcalf told Anthony, “I’m not going to fight you” before the stabbing.

“You can meet deadly force with deadly force in Texas, but you cannot meet force, a shove, with deadly force, a stab,” he said. “Size differential does not work in this case; you do not get to kill someone just because they are bigger than you.”

Wirskye argued the stabbing had to be “immediately necessary” for self-defense to be valid.

“Folks, it is not self-defense,” he said. “It was murder, murder, plain and simple.”

Prosecution witnesses testified last week that Anthony cursed at, provoked and insulted students after being asked to leave the tent. A 16-year-old Memorial student testified Saturday that he heard Anthony call the students “a bunch of pussies” who were “not going to do nothing about it” when he refused to leave.

A Centennial student testifying for the defense Monday admitted under cross-examination by prosecutors that he incorrectly stated initially that Anthony was surrounded before the stabbing, but he was surrounded after.

Before closing arguments, Collin County District Judge John Roach Jr. rejected a defense request to give jurors the option of convicting on the lowest possible felony charge of criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors argued no evidence had been entered that Anthony was unaware the stabbing would result in death. He would have faced between six months and two years in state prison on that charge.

Anthony’s attorneys have criticized the “noise” and “completely false information” surrounding the trial, which has drawn national attention and online misinformation involving a white victim and Black defendant.

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