Texas teenager gets 35-year sentence for fatal stabbing at school athletics event
Jury rejects self-defence after eyewitness testimony, adult charging rules turn campus violence into long prison terms
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Mugshot of Karmelo Anthony, now 19, who has been found guilty for the murder of Austin Metcalf in Frisco, Texas, in 2025
bbc.com
Mugshot of Karmelo Anthony, now 19, who has been found guilty for the murder of Austin Metcalf in Frisco, Texas, in 2025
bbc.com
A Texas teenager has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for the murder of another 17-year-old at a high school athletics event in the Dallas area, according to the BBC. The jury found Karmelo Anthony guilty of killing Austin Metcalf in an incident that took place in April 2025. Prosecutors said Anthony threatened Metcalf before intentionally killing him, while the defence argued self-defence.
The BBC reports the case drew national attention, in part because Texas law allows 17-year-olds to be charged as adults, and because the trial became racially polarising. Prosecutors called nearly two dozen witnesses and leaned heavily on student eyewitness accounts that described Anthony as the aggressor. The Collin County chief medical examiner testified that Metcalf suffered a large wound to the chest and that the knife pierced his heart.
The defence called its own student witnesses and a track coach, who testified that Anthony had been nominated for a team captain role. The BBC also cites a local NBC affiliate reporting Anthony had near-perfect grades. The jury reached its guilty verdict in less than three hours, and the judge gave jurors the option to consider manslaughter, which would have carried a shorter maximum sentence.
Outside the courtroom, the BBC says the civil rights group Next Generation Action Network advocated for Anthony and noted that none of the jurors were black. That detail sits alongside a trial record built on eyewitness credibility: in school settings, the same crowds that make events feel safe also generate conflicting accounts that lawyers later try to sort into a single narrative. Once the adult system is engaged, the sentencing range is set less by a teenager’s biography than by the statutory frame the state chooses to apply.
The killing happened at an organised school event intended to showcase competition and discipline. The sentence will be served in the same adult prison system that the law treats as interchangeable with the schoolyard.