Why Karmelo Anthony Deserves to Grow Old in Prison
There really is a time and a place when potentially lethal violence is an appropriate response to a situation. However, this isn’t the old West, and you can’t kill a man, as legendary gunfighter John Wesley Hardin was reputed to have done, for snoring too loud. Our society has strict laws in place that limit when, where, and how it’s appropriate to kill another human being.
That brings us to a case that has been getting a lot of attention in the news lately.
Karmelo Anthony stabbed another student named Austin Metcalf to death at a track meet and quite a few people on the Left apparently think he did nothing wrong. In fact, Anthony raised more than 400k in a GiveSendGo fundraiser and is currently out on bond:
Karmelo Anthony is a student at Centennial High School and there was a track meet there. On the visitor’s side of the field, the Memorial High School track team had a tent.
Karmelo Anthony, who was armed with a knife, went to the visitor’s field and sat in the Memorial High School track team’s tent. Why did Anthony go to the visitor’s side of the field? Unknown. Why did he have a knife? Unknown. Why did he go into the tent? There were references in the report to rain, but it’s unknown if that was occurring at the time of the incident.
In any case, when Anthony went into the Memorial High School track team tent, they told him he wasn’t supposed to be there, but Anthony refused to leave. He was carrying a knife in a bag and early on in the interaction, he allegedly stuck his hand in the bag. He supposedly said, “Touch me and see what happens.” After some further back and forth between the killer and Austin Metcalf, the victim either pushed or grabbed (the witness accounts differed on that) Anthony and Anthony responded by stabbing him to death and leaving the tent. After Anthony left the tent, he tossed the knife away, cried hysterically, admitted he did it to the cops, asked how the victim was, and tried to paint himself as the victim.
So, how do we analyze this case? Well, back in 2023, I wrote an article called, “When Are You Legally Allowed to Shoot Someone in the United States?” Even though this was a stabbing, the same basic principles apply in this case:
Long before you point a gun at someone and shoot, you should think hard about these questions until they’re practically second nature:
1) Would a reasonable person think your life was in danger?
2) Could you have resolved the situation without shooting?
3) Are you the aggressor?
4) Where is it taking place?
These may seem like relatively straightforward questions, but that’s not really the case because there are so many potential variables at play. Let’s talk about them.
1) Would a reasonable person think your life was in danger? This is by far the most critical question and the reality is that the answer may not be clear-cut. Are you a man or a woman? Big or small? An adult or a child? Young or old? Sick or well? Are they armed or bare-handed? Do you know them or is it a stranger? Have you already sustained a serious injury or are you unscathed?
Let’s say a weird, average-sized homeless guy is yelling at people on the street. He staggers towards you and says he might have to, “kick your ass.” A jury might come to very different conclusions about whether your life was in danger if you’re a martial arts instructor, Marine, or even a healthy 25-year-old man than they would if you were a woman, a child, or an old man walking with a cane.
Shooting someone for walking up to your door or turning into your driveway? It doesn’t meet that test and if your life is not in danger, you shouldn’t point a gun at another human being.
2) Could you have resolved the situation without shooting? In some places and situations (this gets into things like “Stand Your Ground” and “Castle Doctrine”), this matters less than others, but if you have to kill someone, you ideally want to be able to say, “I had no other choice.” When I took professional firearms training at Front Site, the instructors there flat out said that if someone broke into their house and they were alone, they’d lock themselves in their bedrooms and let them ransack the house rather than shoot them. Why did hard-as-nails instructors who were experts with guns say that? Because they have a very good understanding of the ramifications that may come from killing another human being, even if you are 100% in the right. Threats to your freedom. Media smear campaigns. Civil lawsuits. You could miss that burglar and the shot could go through the wall and it could kill your neighbor’s kid sleeping across the street. It goes on and on – and that’s even if you do the right thing. If you can avoid killing another person by retreating, even if you aren’t legally required to do that, I’d strongly recommend you do exactly that.
3) Are you the aggressor? The person who is defending themselves is going to get the benefit of the doubt. If you attack someone, things get out of hand and you end up shooting them, there’s a good chance you’re going to jail. Don’t be the aggressor and don’t escalate the situation. The more confusion there is about who the aggressor is or whether it’s a mutual conflict, the less likely you are to be viewed as the “good guy” who reluctantly did what he had to do in a court of law.
4) Where is it taking place? In the United States, you’re almost always going to get a tremendous amount of latitude in court if you have to shoot a stranger INSIDE your home. That’s so much the case that I once had a cop tell me that if you shoot a burglar on your porch, drag his corpse back inside before you call the police (I’m not recommending that, I am just telling you what he said). If I am visiting YOUR HOUSE and I shoot you, that’s going to raise questions about my motives. If you shoot someone during a bar fight, the assumption is going to be that it was a mutual thing, you were losing and you shot the guy. If you knowingly walk into a situation that could get sketchy and end up killing someone, even if it’s a righteous shoot, people are going to wonder about your motives. Did you actually go there looking to kill someone?
So, how does Karmelo Anthony fare under this standard? Not very well at all.
1) Was his life in danger? Not in the least. Worst case scenario, he probably would have gotten a black eye.
2) Could it have been resolved without stabbing the victim? Yes. Very easily. He could have just left the Memorial High School track team tent he wasn’t supposed to be in as he was apparently asked to do over and over again. Ironically, after he stabbed Metcalf to death, he immediately left the tent.
3) Was Karmelo Anthony the aggressor? His supporters would say, “No,” but you could make a good case that he was. He was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. He refused to leave. He verbally encouraged the victim to put his hands on him. It’s like that dumb game kids play to annoy each other where one of them tries to get as close as possible to the other one while going, “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you! Mom, I didn’t touch him!” You could also make an argument that it was a mutual fight, but however you slice it, Anthony clearly isn’t an innocent victim in this, and judging by the police report, you could make a good case that he engineered the entire conflict.
4) Where did this happen? In a place Karmelo Anthony wasn’t supposed to be with people who quite properly asked him to move.
Barring other evidence coming out, this is just a straightforward, non-ambiguous murder. In fact, although it might be too ambitious to charge Anthony with premeditated murder, you do have to wonder why he was on the visitor’s side of the field, in a tent he wasn’t supposed to be in, why he refused to leave, why he had a knife and why he was apparently chomping at the bit to use it. Was he there looking to stab someone? That would be hard to say without more evidence, but it’s certainly a legitimate question to ask at this point.
All-in-all, unless a lot of facts come out that contradict the police report, it shouldn’t be a controversial to say that this appears to be a clearcut murder and barring unreleased exculpatory evidence, Karmelo Anthony deserves to grow old in jail for it.
I completely agree with you. As for the donations of probably over $400,000 by now to the kid's GiveSendGo account, I can't help but wonder if a sizable sum of the total of that was made by a handful of leftist wealthy donors who also fund the likes of BLM. Of course it's unlikely these donations are made in the name of these rich donors, so they won't show up on the givers list. Leftists of the worse kind want to sow racial discord, and miss no opportunities to manufacture them or take advantage of circumstances like this. I could get even more into the weeds of speculation, but I'll stop. The only thing that kid deserves is a fair trial, but my guess is he won't get one and will be found not guilty, if he even gets to trial. Sickening.
Excellent discussion concerning this killing. Many good points to consider; and, of course I'll be sharing this so others can consider these points. Thanks, John.