A Texas teenager who fatally stabbed a 17-year-old track athlete from a rival team during a meet was convicted of murder Tuesday in a trial that drew national attention far beyond the booming Dallas suburb where the two students attended different high schools.
A jury rejected Karmelo Anthony’s claims of self-defense during a confrontation with Austin Metcalf in the stadium’s bleachers last year. Anthony, now 19, didn’t testify. Most who did were students who described a heated exchange over him refusing to leave a tent belonging to Metcalf’s team during a rainy competition.
Anthony faces up to life in prison upon sentencing.
The fatal stabbing of a high school athlete at a Texas track competition was “murder plain and simple,” a prosecutor declared Tuesday before a jury began deliberations.
Karmelo Anthony, now 19, did not testify in his own defense about the killing of Austin Metcalf, 17, whose death in April 2025 stunned Frisco, a booming Dallas suburb where the two students attended different schools.
Jurors heard dueling narratives from prosecutor Bill Wirskye and defense attorney Mike Howard, who repeatedly emphasized during his closing argument that Anthony was defending himself after Metcalf tried to eject Anthony, a Centennial High School student, from the Memorial High School track team's tent.
Howard told jurors that Metcalf had “no legal right to put his hands on Karmelo.”
“Texas law does not require that you wait until you get hit,” Howard said. “In that split second of chaos, you must put yourself in his shoes.”
During the nearly weeklong trial, prosecutors have said that Anthony provoked Metcalf, and witnesses have testified that Anthony was the aggressor.
“This is not self-defense, folks. It’s murder plain and simple,” Wirskye told jurors Tuesday.
The courtroom at the Collin County courthouse was packed again as the public passed through an extra security checkpoint to get inside and watch before jurors began their deliberations.
Several schools were competing on a rainy April day when Anthony sat under the Memorial High's tent that was perched in the bleachers. Metcalf and others had repeatedly told Anthony to leave, witnesses testified, leading to an escalating confrontation.
Anthony at one point reached inside a bag and replied: “Touch me and see what happens,” according to a police report.
Metcalf then pushed Anthony, according to witnesses, who said Anthony reacted by pulling out a knife and stabbing Metcalf in the chest.
“You don’t get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoke the shove,” Wirskye said.
He said deadly force has to be “immediately necessary” to be legal and that Anthony could have walked away and abandoned “the encounter that he’d provoked.”
Wirskye also made a broader pitch to the jury: “Ultimately, this case is about accountability. What kind of community do you want to live in.”
Howard noted that Metcalf and Anthony did not know each other. He said Anthony “had absolutely no motive, other than that he felt he was in danger.”
One teammate told jurors that Anthony was “distraught” after the stabbing.
“I was hearing him say, ‘I told him not to touch me,’” the teenager testified Monday.
The judge ordered that the names of teenage witnesses not be made public.
The stabbing quickly drew wide attention, in part because of social media posts that amplified the case in racial terms. Anthony is Black; Metcalf was white. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys told jurors during the trial that race had nothing to do with the case.
