The father of murdered high school football standout Austin Metcalf has condemned what he described as the “moral decay of society,” accusing media personalities including The View’s Sunny Hostin of speaking about the case without understanding the facts.
Karmelo Anthony, 19, was convicted earlier this month of fatally stabbing 17-year-old Metcalf during a high school track meet last year and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Anthony is already moving to challenge the verdict, bringing in a high-profile legal team to examine the trial record as part of an effort to have the conviction overturned.
Some critics have argued that Anthony, who is Black, did not receive a fair trial, pointing in part to the absence of Black jurors on the panel.
Amid the continuing debate over the proceedings, Metcalf’s father, Jeff Metcalf, pushed back against what he called “multiple lies and mistruths” being spread about the case.
“People had their own opinions without even seeing the facts, and that’s the part I have trouble with,” Jeff said Monday during an appearance with Fox News’ Will Cain.
“Unfortunately, in today’s moral decay of society that we’ve witnessed, people believe that if they have their own voice, they scream loud enough, they’re right,” he added.
Asked about Hostin’s argument that the jury should have found Anthony acted in self-defense, Jeff said she did not know what she was talking about.
Slain high school football star Austin Metcalf’s father hit out at those who have spewed ‘multiple lies and mistruths’ about Karmelo Anthony’s trial
His son Austin, 17, was fatally stabbed at a high school track meet last year
Jeff challenged The View cohosts to have him on the show
‘They don’t know me. They don’t know Hunter, Austin. They don’t know Karmelo. They’re looking for their 15 minutes of fame or their clickbait,’ the heartbroken father claimed.
‘They’re looking to monetize the death of my son,’ he added. ‘I really wish they wouldn’t speak about it at all.’
Speaking specifically of Hostin, Jeff then declared that ‘she has no idea on the facts of the case, but she wants to spew her public opinion on a platform that reaches millions of people everyday.
‘She is completely wrong,’ he asserted. ‘And if they want [to] take me in, call me, ask them to be on The View with them, I would gladly – fly me up there and let me talk to all of you.’
In the meantime, Jeff said he hopes newly-released footage from the stabbing in Frisco, Texas showing Anthony confronting Metcalf inside his tent, the fatal blow and Anthony running away in the aftermath will ‘clear up a lot of the misinformation that was provided throughout the entire year before the trial came to light.’
The heartbreaking footage also caught the moments after police arrived on the scene, when officers handcuffed Anthony – and he corrected a cop who referred to him as an ‘alleged suspect.’
‘I’m not alleged. I did it,’ Anthony could be heard saying in the footage.
In another clip, Anthony sounded as if he were sobbing as he was escorted from the scene.
‘He put his hands on me,’ the killer claimed. ‘I told him not to. He put his hands on me.’
Anthony, 19, was found guilty earlier this month of Metcalf’s murder
Anthony is pictured being arrested at the scene of the track meet on April 2, 2025
Witnesses at the trial described how Anthony entered another team’s tent and provoked Metcalf before he pulled a knife on the teenager
At the trial, Anthony and his lawyers claimed he stabbed Metcalf in an act of self-defense after they got into a confrontation during a rain delay at the sporting event.
They also implied that Metcalf may have impaled himself on the knife.
But prosecutors destroyed the self-defense claim with video evidence and witness testimony.
Witnesses said Anthony was the aggressor, testifying how he entered the other team’s tent that day and told Metcalf: ‘Touch me and see what happens,’ provoking Metcalf to push Anthony, who then pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest.
The knife pierced through his bone in the center of his chest and punctured the right side of his heart, a medical examiner testified.
Prosecutors said Metcalf’s twin brother, Hunter, rushed to his aid as Anthony ran from the scene and later tried to blend into groups of kids who were exiting the stadium.
Still, when the verdict was read, those who had shown up to the courthouse in Collin County, Texas, to support Anthony crumbled to the ground.
Ousted Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett also told TMZ in the aftermath that Anthony was wrongfully convicted of murder – calling it ‘evidence of a broken [justice] system.’
Critics have previously claimed Anthony was treated unfairly at his trial because he is black, and there were no black members on the jury
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A knife pierced through Metcalf’s bone in the center of his chest and punctured the right side of his heart
She noted that Anthony, a black teenager, only struck Austin, who was white, once but will now be in prison for at least 17 and a half years before he is eligible for parole.
‘Thirty-five years for a kid who decided to go under a tent that was not his team’s tent as it was raining and simply didn’t want to be put out in the rain by some random kid that he didn’t know who was larger than him?’ Crockett said incredulously of the jury’s sentencing verdict.
The congresswoman also argued that ‘it wasn’t against the law’ for Anthony to have the knife.
‘It may have been prohibited by school rules, which he wasn’t at his school at the time, but it definitely wasn’t against the law.’
When Crockett was then asked whether she believed race played a role in the verdict, she said: ‘Oh my God, I know Collin County, so absolutely.
‘And unfortunately that was not the county for a black boy.’
Jeff Metcalf has repeatedly denied that race was a factor
Jeff Metcalf was kicked out of a press conference Anthony’s parents gave in the days following the fatal stabbing
At that point, the journalist asked Crockett whether she believed a white teenager who committed the same crime against a black teenager would have received the same sentence.
‘I would guarantee you, it wouldn’t have happened,’ she insisted.
‘I don’t even know if he would have been convicted, because if a white boy would have said they were afraid of a black boy, something tells me that that jury that didn’t have any black people on it, they would have believed him in his fear.’
But Jeff Metcalf has repeatedly denied that race was a factor, noting in the interview with Will Cain on Monday that half the members of Metcalf’s football team were black.
‘I don’t care what color you are, I want to judge you [on] how you treat people, what’s your character like,’ he said. ‘Your color makes no difference, it doesn’t determine your IQ, it doesn’t determine your faith, it doesn’t determine how much money you have. But your character shows who you are truly and that’s how I judge people.’
‘For a person to not able to objectively look at something, use common logic, common sense, to come to a determination just based on merely the facts, not the color of one’s skin,’ Jeff added. ‘That tells me a whole lot about your character if you choose that direction.’
The grieving father even claimed he noticed a ‘turning point’ in the days after his son was killed, when he was kicked out of Anthony’s parent’s press conference.
He said he showed up to pray with Anthony’s family, to ‘show this wasn’t a racial divide [and] that we can kind of close the gap rather than widening it.’
‘I was actually hoping to show them, “Hey look man, I know what happened was horrible and your son made a horrible mistake,”‘ Jeff explained. ‘I was hoping for some accountability maybe and some remorse – and neither one was shown.’
Attorneys including veteran appellate lawyer Russell Wilson and Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe said they will conduct an independent review of the trial record as they ‘pursue all available avenues of appeal’
But, Jeff said, the family had already retained lawyer Dominique Alexander, who threw him out of the press conference, saying the grieving father shouldn’t be there and that it was not dignified.’
‘That’s when they took it from any type of remorse, which they did not show, to the fact that now we’re gonna play the race card and now we’re gonna politicize this, now we’re getting a political activist involved – the two things I said [in] one of the first interviews I ever did was “Please don’t make this about race and please don’t politicize it,” but they chose to do both.’
A new team of six attorneys are now working pro-bono to overturn Anthony’s murder conviction – including Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe, veteran appellate lawyer Russell Wilson and civil rights attorney Brooke Cluse.
The so-called Stand With Karmelo Coalition will now conduct an independent review of the trial record as they ‘pursue all available avenues of appeal,’ they announced on Monday.
The team will specifically focus on determining whether any errors occurred during Anthony’s trial and raising any issues they believe could support a decision to overturn his conviction.
Judge John Roach defended the jury’s verdict in an interview with WFAA
But Judge John Roach, who oversaw the trial, has said he believed the jury made the right decision in an interview with WFAA.
‘Yes, they did, because they were picked based upon the law, they listened to the facts,’ he said. ‘It happened in this courtroom, and they got a verdict.’
The judge also told how court officials began preparing for the trial eight months in advance, anticipating the extraordinary public interest in the case, and said he was satisfied with how the proceedings turned out.
‘As long as I follow the law, I sleep well at night,’ he said.
