BREAKING: Karmelo Anthony sentenced to 35 YEARS for murder of Austin Metcalf

Anthony stabbed Austin Metcalf in April 2025 at a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas. Words were exchanged between the two after Anthony came to sit in the Memorial High School team tent, an area typically set aside for team members. He was asked about 15 times to leave, but witnesses testified that he refused to go. Several students were called to testify. They stated that they did not believe Anthony acted in self defense, which was his attorney's primary argument for his innocence.

After the guilty verdict came down on Tuesday, protesters outside the courthouse in support of Anthony were outraged that he had been found guilty by the jury. They had been gathered outside the courthouse since the beginning of the trial. Protesters framed the murder and trial in racial terms, saying that they would back Anthony even if he were found guilty.

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During the chaos outside the courthouse, one man was arrested by police.

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Supporters of Anthony yelled in reaction to the sentencing, claiming that Anthony had been acting in self-defense, despite the jury's findings. One supporter at the scene claimed that that Anthony should have killed Metcalf's twin brother as well as during the encounter. Metcalf died in his brother Hunter's arms.

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Following the guilty verdict, representative for the Karmelo Anthony family Dominique Alexander spoke out and blamed the white jurors in the courtroom. While there were minority jurors on the panel, the black jurors had been struck from the jury pool because they were teachers.

“It showed very clearly that a black boy was allowed not one black soul on a jury," Alexander said, "an all-white jury convicted him in two to three hours. We know that they did not prove their case. They are currently sentencing Carmelo Anthony, but we know that the Next Generation Action Network put the first $10,000 towards an appellate attorney, and we will fight Collin County like hell.”

Throughout the trial, prosecutor Bill Wirskye said in opening statements that Austin's last words were "I've been stabbed" before he died in his twin brother’s arms. Anthony flung the knife and fled the scene after the stabbing only to be aprehended by a school resource officer. When that officer radioed in to say he had the alleged assailant in custody, Anthony said "I'm not alleged, I did it."

Anthony claimed that he had acted in self-defense and that Metcalf touched him first. Anthony had been told by Metcalf to leave his team's tent at the track meet, and when he was confronted, Anthony said, "Touch me and see what happens." That indicates that Anthony had provoked Metcalf, which negates the self defense claims.

In closing arguments, Wirksye told the jurors: "This is one of those rare cases where every important fact can be boiled down to one sentence: You do not get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoke the shove." He added, "Why didn't [Anthony] just not walk away? You see had a choice to walk away and abandon the encounter."

"You can meet deadly force with deadly force in Texas, but you can't meet force, a shove, with deadly force, a stab," he said. "Size differential, it doesn't work in this case, you don't get to kill someone just because they are bigger than you."

Despite the case not touching race relations in any legal sense, the murder trial has been a cultural flashpoint as it has expressed where race relations are in the US. The supporters of Anthony were outraged that there were no black jurors in the trial, and Alexander, in the reaction to the guilty verdict, alluded to the exploitations of slavery in his defense of Anthony and claimed that "black America should be very upset about what went on today.”

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