Karmelo Anthony gets 35 years for fatal Texas track meet stabbing

A Frisco ISD track meet at Kuykendall Stadium ended in a murder case that put Karmelo Anthony behind bars for 35 years after a Collin County jury found him guilty of killing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf. Anthony, who was 19 at sentencing, heard the prison term on June 9 after a punishment phase that lasted about two hours and 20 minutes.

The case moved fast once it reached trial. Jury selection began June 1 in Collin County, and by June 9 jurors had already convicted Anthony of murder before turning to punishment the same day. Less than 24 hours after the conviction, his legal team filed a notice of appeal, setting up the next round of litigation in a case that has drawn intense attention across North Texas.

At the center of the trial was the fight over intent and sequence. Prosecutors told jurors that Anthony and Metcalf did not know each other before the confrontation near a team tent, and that Anthony escalated a shove into a stabbing with a hidden knife. Defense lawyers argued that Anthony was scared, overwhelmed, and acting in seconds, claiming he was responding in self-defense. The medical examiner testified that the knife wound pierced Metcalf’s heart and was not survivable, while student witnesses described the chaos that followed the attack.

The punishment phase added another layer of legal pressure. The judge told jurors they had to decide whether “sudden passion” applied, a Texas finding that can reduce punishment if a defendant proves it by a preponderance of the evidence. The jury rejected that path and imposed the 35-year sentence instead, a decision that means Anthony could face decades in prison before becoming eligible for parole under Texas law. After the sentence, Metcalf’s family delivered victim-impact statements in court, confronting the man convicted in the death of the Memorial High School athlete.

What began as a public youth sporting event ended with a ruling that the jury treated as murder, not an excused split-second reaction. For the Metcalf family, the scene at Kuykendall Stadium now sits at the center of a case that has moved from the track meet to the appellate track.