McKINNEY, Texas — Karmelo Anthony committed murder when he fatally stabbed 17-year-old Austin Metcalf last year during a confrontation at a high school track meet, a jury decided Tuesday. Anthony kept his head down as the verdict was read, his eyes appearing to squint. Defense attorney Mike Howard had one arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. The guilty verdict came after nearly three ...

From left, Mike Howard, attorney for Karmelo Anthony, speaks to reporters as Dominique Alexander, president and CEO of Next Generation Action Network, stands next to him following a bond hearing in Anthony's case at the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney, Texas, on Monday, April 14, 2025.

Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News/TNS

McKINNEY, Texas — Karmelo Anthony committed murder when he fatally stabbed 17-year-old Austin Metcalf last year during a confrontation at a high school track meet, a jury decided Tuesday.

Anthony kept his head down as the verdict was read, his eyes appearing to squint. Defense attorney Mike Howard had one arm around his shoulders, pulling him close.

The guilty verdict came after nearly three hours of deliberation at the end of a closely watched trial in Collin County. The case has attracted national attention from the start and fueled months of racist vitriol on social media. Anthony is Black. Metcalf was white.

Anthony, a 17-year-old senior at Frisco Centennial High School at the time of the incident, faces five years to life in prison.

The sentencing phase of the trial is set to begin Tuesday afternoon.

Closing arguments

Assistant District Attorney Bill Wirskye, the lead prosecutor in the case, disputed the defense’s self-defense claims in his closing arguments to the jury Tuesday morning. He asked the panel to focus, in part, on Anthony’s apparent mindset when he came to a high school track meet with a knife in his bag.

Anthony’s decision to bring the weapon, his refusal to leave an opposing team’s tent after being told multiple times to get out, surveillance footage captured during the incident, and the witness testimony were enough for a murder conviction, Wirskye said.

The prosecutor also argued Anthony provoked Metcalf into pushing him.

“You don’t get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoked the shove,” Wirskye told the panel.

The prosecutor also dismissed the defense’s theory that Metcalf impaled himself on Anthony’s knife as “ludicrous,” but urged jurors to return a verdict of manslaughter if they believed it had merit.

In his arguments to the jury, Howard challenged the state’s portrayal of the case on multiple levels. He asserted that Metcalf did not have the legal authority to “put his hands on” Anthony.

“A hit, a shove, a push,” Howard told jurors, “’Melo had an absolute right to defend himself from that.”

Howard revisited the Collin County medical examiner's testimony in closing. He used a highlighter to demonstrate the possible angle of the knife wound on Metcalf, describing it as “awkward."

The defense lawyer argued that an intentional, aggressive stabbing motion would have produced a different wound, suggesting instead that it was consistent with a hasty action taken in self-defense.

Before the closing arguments began, Roach told jurors they could consider two possible charges: murder and manslaughter.

Once deliberations began, they quickly arrived on a verdict.