The state rested its case Saturday in the Karmelo Anthony trial in McKinney, Texas, after jurors heard testimony from 21 witnesses and the murder case moved to the defense. Anthony, 19, is accused in the death of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf and could face five to 99 years or life in prison if convicted.
The trial has been watched closely because it centers on a fatal stabbing at a high school track meet and is expected to last about two weeks. Court is set to resume at 9 a.m. on Monday, when the defense will get its turn after the prosecution ended its presentation well short of the 35 witnesses it had originally expected to call.
Much of Saturday’s testimony turned on what happened around the team tents before the confrontation. A 17-year-old Memorial High School student said he did not want to be there and spent only about two minutes with defense lawyers. He told police that teammate Eddie Parra had called Anthony over to the tent, said he saw Anthony and others shake hands, and said Anthony sat down before the two talked. The teen also said it was Metcalf’s brother, Hunter, who first called attention to Anthony.
Jeremiah Smith, 18, who recently graduated from Centennial High School, gave the defense a broader view of how track meets worked. Smith, who played football and track and said he considered Anthony a friend, testified that meets are crowded and athletes are free to walk around. He said he had spent time under other teams’ tents, including Memorial’s, and never had a problem. On cross-examination, he said he would leave if another team asked him to and acknowledged there was no reason to carry a knife to a track meet.
That account clashed with the prosecution’s core claim that the weapon had no place at the meet. Police say Anthony and Metcalf argued over seating in the stadium stands on April 2, 2025, and that the argument escalated when Anthony stabbed Metcalf in the chest with a pocketknife. The defense has been pushing back on the idea that sitting under another school’s tent was out of bounds, and coach Adam Linwood backed that up, saying he did not know of any rule or expectation that prohibited it and describing the scene as “organized chaos.”
Linwood said his athletes would mingle with friends from other schools during downtime, that he would not kick another school’s student out of his tent, and that Centennial now has a policy requiring students to stay under their own tent. He also said Anthony earned the 2024 Team Captain Award and that he had not spoken to him since the stabbing. The judge denied a defense bid for a direct verdict, leaving the jury to sort through the competing versions of a confrontation that now heads into the defense phase.
