Karmelo Anthony found guilty in fatal track meet stabbing

Black residents in Frisco Texas rallied outside of the courtroom outraged when the guilty verdict against Karmelo Anthony from an all white jury was announced on June 9. The 19-year-old had admitted to stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf during a confrontation before a track meet but said it was in self-defense. Witnesses testified that Metcalf had asked Anthony to leave from under their team's tent before a track meet on that rainy day and he responded, "Touch me and see what happens." Metcalf responded to the dare with a push the witness said. Anthony pulled a pocket knife from his backpack, stabbed the runner in the chest and fled. In his mother Kayla Hayes' tearful plea she begged the court to have mercy on her first born child. After a 35-year sentence was read Metcalf's mother said the defendant should be "happy" that is all the time he got. He was facing 90 years.

"You should feel lucky you got 35 because I’ve been given a life sentence," Meghan Metcalfe said of the lasting pain of her son's death.

Following the 2025 incident the Antony family received death threat and negative press about their comfortable lifestyle, which was completely irrelevant to the events that unfolded.

Two families, two communities and two races are hurting on both sides of a judicial dividing line marked by societal patterns that seem to justify Blacks getting harsher legal consequences than non-Blacks. Race is taken into account as the dynamics outside of courtroom seem to trickle in about the biases and presumptions of jurors. On one side they said the verdict is a miscarriage of justice on the other they say he should have gotten life or the death penalty.

The highly publicized case raised concerns about school safety, racial justice and equal rights.

A week beforehand a Chinese store owner in South Carolina, Rick Chow, had been found not guilty for shooting suspected Black shoplifter Cyrus Carmack-Belton, 14. Chow and his son Some members of the Black community anticipated