A deadly confrontation. One teenager dead, another fighting for his future. Today, prosecutors and defense attorneys delivered starkly different versions of what happened under a crowded track meet tent during a rain delay. A confrontation that ended with Austin Metcalf stabbed to death and Carmelo Anthony facing a possible life sentence.

Why did this teenager bring a knife to a track meet? What really happened under that tent during a rain delay? We learned a shocking new piece of information about the knife allegedly used to kill Austin Metcalf. We are inside the courtroom as the mystery at the heart of this case begins to unfold.

The first hinge landed before a single witness took the stand: “A seventeen-year-old boy brought a folding knife to a high school track meet. Not a pocketknife. Not a tool. A knife with a blade already open, prosecutors say. Ready. Waiting. The question isn’t whether he stabbed Austin Metcalf. The question is why he brought the knife in the first place. And the answer to that question will determine whether he spends the rest of his life in prison.”

So today, the state of Texas began to lay out its case against Carmelo Anthony. And not only did they argue the teenager murdered Austin Metcalf, they say it was premeditated. There is video of the alleged incident that was shown in court today. Court TV’s Cody Thomas is in the courtroom for this trial. He saw that video for himself. He’s going to join me here in a moment to break down what he saw.

Now, as a reminder, there are a lot of restrictions when it comes to how we are covering this trial because the judge has not allowed any cameras or audio or live streaming. So really the only way you’re going to be able to get insight on this case is if you follow along with us here on “On the Case” as well as with Court TV’s Cody Thomas.

So let’s start with how this day started. There was a line of people here in Collin County, outside Dallas. Roughly two hundred people outside the courthouse trying to get in to see this trial take place. And there are just twenty-seven spots in the courtroom.

Before we get to what prosecutors and defense attorneys argued in their opening statements, we need to talk about this jury. There is no question that race is one of the elements that has made this story the center of a lot of attention. The racial makeup of this jury is definitely something getting attention here. This jury of twelve people is made up of three Asian women, one Middle Eastern woman, and a woman of color. But reportedly, no African-Americans are on this jury. The rest of the jury is made up of white men. According to local reports, three African-American women were stricken from the jury, claiming they had bias in the case, claiming they didn’t want to convict Carmelo Anthony. The court went through more than six hundred potential jurors in the selection process. And one question we are told hung up a lot of people was whether they could convict a teenager and put him away for life.

Carmelo Anthony is that teenager, and he is charged with first-degree murder in the death of another teen named Austin Metcalf. The road surrounding the courthouse has been blocked off, and it does appear that Carmelo is being brought into court away from cameras. Again, very strict rules when it comes to this trial by the judge. We can’t film inside the courthouse. We can’t film the trial. We can’t live stream it. So we just have the words of the people who are witnessing it for themselves.

Prosecutors dropped some new information today, information we didn’t know until the opening statements began. Before we get to that, I want to lay out the timeline using the perspectives of the prosecution and the defense.

All of this took place last year on April 2nd at a track meet for local high schools in Frisco, Texas. Austin Metcalf’s high school and Carmelo Anthony’s high school were two of the schools competing. Everything changes when a rainstorm moves into the area and delays the track meet. Everybody’s going to maybe back to their bus, maybe they’re going to a tent. Carmelo’s high school did not have a tent, but Austin Metcalf’s high school did. Carmelo ducks under the tent of Austin Metcalf’s high school.

This is where the versions of events are very different between the prosecution and the defense. The prosecution says that Metcalf’s team told Carmelo Anthony to leave from being under the tent, and Carmelo wouldn’t move. The defense says that the reason Carmelo went to the tent is because he had recognized a close family friend of his girlfriend. The defense says that once Austin Metcalf and his twin brother noticed Carmelo, they told him to leave. Carmelo was just confused as to why it was a big deal that he was under the tent.

The prosecution says that when Carmelo was asked to leave the tent, he said something along the lines of “make me.” And when Austin Metcalf stepped up to Carmelo to tell him to leave, they end up having some words. That’s when Carmelo Anthony allegedly stabs Austin Metcalf in the chest. A big piece of new information relates to the alleged murder weapon. Prosecutors say it was a folding knife, and that knife was already open. They allege that the knife was ready, and they say that Carmelo Anthony was looking for a reason to use it. They characterize what happened as Carmelo baiting Austin Metcalf into a confrontation.

The defense argues that Carmelo had to act in self-defense. They say that Austin Metcalf was the aggressor. They say that Austin made the first physical contact with Carmelo, and Carmelo had to react in a moment of chaos and used that knife to protect himself.

After the stabbing, Carmelo ran. The prosecution argues that the fact that he drops the knife and takes off proves guilt. They also say that he tried to allegedly blend in with the crowd when people went looking for him. The defense says that Carmelo ran because he was defending himself, that he was trying to get out of the situation, and they say that he went to one of his coaches until police arrived.

Once police arrived, Carmelo is quoted as saying, “I’m not alleged. I did it.” Prosecutors say that proves Carmelo knew what he did. They also say that Carmelo said, “I told him not to,” when speaking about Austin Metcalf. They say that also shows that Carmelo wasn’t afraid for his life. That Carmelo, they argue, murdered Austin Metcalf.

The defense looks at the sequence a little differently. They say that the fact that Carmelo said “I’m not alleged I did it” doesn’t prove anything. If anything, it shows that he wasn’t hiding the fact that he was involved in this altercation and that he had to do it because it was self-defense.

A big question raised by prosecutors right out of the gate is one that hangs over this trial: why does a seventeen-year-old kid competing at a high school track meet in the middle of the week need to bring a knife with him?

The defense at the start of their opening statements today took the approach of trying to paint Carmelo Anthony not as a killer, but telling the jury that he’s a good kid. This is a guy who was voted captain of his football team. He’s someone who has never been in trouble with the law. He works multiple jobs. He enjoys playing chess. He enjoys going camping. They say that he is not the monster that prosecutors are alleging that he is.

The second hinge arrived during the surveillance video analysis: “Five cameras. Multiple angles. Grainy footage of humanoid blobs under a yellow tent. The prosecution zoomed in, highlighted, shadowed. They did everything but draw arrows. And still, you couldn’t see faces. You couldn’t see the knife. You couldn’t see the moment of impact. The video doesn’t show a murder. It shows a blur. And in that blur, both sides see different truths. That’s not evidence. That’s a Rorschach test. And twelve jurors are about to take it.”

Witness testimony is going to be a driving force behind this trial, but also today prosecutors showed surveillance video of the incident. Cody Thomas of Court TV was in the courtroom for all of the testimony. I want to begin right after opening statements. Surveillance video of this incident was shown. What can you tell us about that?

“Yeah, Chris, it was five different angles of surveillance video. Looked like the cameras were on light posts inside the high school football stadium because they were very wide shots. The first witness was a forensic video analyst who went through and tried to enhance the videos. We watched the original videos first, and quite frankly, you really couldn’t see much of anything. Then after a few minutes, we zoomed in. He showed all the enhancements, and he had spot shadowing and highlighting who we’re supposed to be looking at. You can’t really make out any distinct features, and the prosecution admitted that before they even played the video. They had to look at clothing and identify the person of interest—Carmelo Anthony—and the victim, Austin Metcalf. They outlined all of that based on the photos that came out later once Carmelo was taken into custody.”

“But again, the videos establish what happened. You can definitely make out what happened, but it wasn’t to me personally as compelling as I thought it would be because it looks like gas station video. It’s really grainy. When it’s zoomed in, as with any picture, it loses quality. But you can see the tent where everything goes down. You see Carmelo Anthony walk under the tent two minutes before Austin Metcalf and his friends get to the tent, and then everything starts going down within four and a half minutes. You see some humanoid blobs under the yellow Memorial High School tent, and then you see one figure kind of jolt really fast to and from. The prosecution was saying that was the initial push. They’re not denying that Austin Metcalf made physical contact. They admitted that there was a physical altercation, but that was the moment you saw the push. And then, of course, you see the twenty-five or thirty kids start scattering throughout the bleachers. Then you see the person of interest—Carmelo Anthony—running down the bleachers, running way away from where the tent was, out onto the track, and into the arms of another coach.”

“But again, the video is establishing, painting a picture of what it looked like that morning. This all happened around 10:02 a.m., right when the track meet was supposed to start. Just really giving us a scene-setter to allow us to understand what was really going down that day.”

We don’t have cameras in the courtroom. Things got emotional near the end of the day. Some of the coaches who witnessed what happened, who witnessed the aftermath—what’s the layout of the courtroom? What did Carmelo Anthony seem like as all of this was going on today?

“So I’m positioned right behind the Metcalf family. It’s a very small courtroom, Chris, only seats about sixty or sixty-five people. Each side, each family, gets fifteen people each. That’s thirty. You have nine of us media people—that’s thirty-nine—and then plus court staff. So it’s about forty-five seats already taken up before members of the public can get inside, which only allowed for about twenty-five. I think the exact number this morning was twenty-seven members of the public allowed to come in.”

“But of course, you have the Metcalf family on one side, the Carmelo Anthony camp on the other side. I’m watching Carmelo during all of these videos, all of the emotional testimony from the different coaches and witnesses. Because at the end of the day, he stabbed a kid to death. Whether it’s proven to be self-defense, whether it’s proven to be murder, whether it’s manslaughter, he still took a human life. And I’m looking at him, and he was kind of stoic. He wasn’t really emotional. He was watching the videos. He didn’t turn away from the videos.”

“But I’m looking at Austin Metcalf’s family, and his father is fully engaged in everything. But every so often, every ten to fifteen minutes, his father would just kind of put his head in his hands like this, and I’d see him nod his head no. Just overwhelming emotion there. I’m looking back and forth trying to gauge the dynamics between both of them—between the alleged aggressor and the victim. There was stoicism on one side and clear emotion on the Metcalf side, as expected.”

“Yeah. I mean, you just think of the weight of everything we’re talking about and even the possibility for Carmelo Anthony that he could be sent to prison for the rest of his life. The testimony of some of the coaches who were there, who were witnesses—it seems like this is where things got really emotional today. When you think of the moment today where things got emotional, what would be that moment for you?”

“The moment for me, Chris, was a coach named Joshua Redmond. He was a defensive coordinator, track coach. He was there at the track meet with Liberty High School, whose tent was only about twenty feet from Memorial High School, where the whole stabbing went down. It was established at the beginning of his testimony that he was a fourteen-year combat Iraq vet. He did three tours in Iraq, and he’s seen death. He’s a one hundred percent disabled veteran. He told the court that he’s been blown up three times—twice in a Humvee, once in a house. So he’s seen carnage before.”

“Yeah.”

“He talks about standing there talking to another coach. He wasn’t hearing anything, and all of a sudden it was just kids scattering, a bunch of yelling and screaming. He goes over there, he realizes what’s happened. He has no relationship with the Metcalf family at all. He only knows the Metcalf twins through the school playing football. He says he gets over there, he sees Austin kind of sunken back into the fence on the bleachers. He’s looking at him, and he’s been told he’s been stabbed, and he’s holding his abdomen. Coach says he looks down, he sees the blood coming through his hands, and he immediately takes his jacket off and starts applying pressure to the wound. He says he sees the color draining from Austin’s face and eventually starts seeing his eyes roll back.”

“While that all sounds emotional, Chris, this is the part that got me. Because he’s seen death before. This coach who was a more-than-a-decade combat vet—the kid Austin stops breathing at some point. They lose a pulse. So he’s back there doing CPR, doing chest compressions. Another coach is doing mouth-to-mouth. So he’s clearly not breathing. One coach is on 911 on the phone with 911. And then he starts talking about the type of breathing that many of us refer to as ‘last breaths.’ He’s looking up at the coach that’s on the phone with 911. He’s looking down at the kid passing away. And those breaths start to come. Those last breaths start to happen. The coach on the phone with 911 is like, ‘Oh, he’s breathing again. He’s breathing again.’ But Coach Redmond on the stand said he knew that was it because he’s heard the last breaths before. He knew those weren’t the normal breaths of someone who’s struggling or straining to breathe. He knew those were the last moments. He said he didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to kill the morale and the hope. Everyone’s hoping—you can hear on the 911 call him saying, ‘Stay with me, Austin. Stay with me. Come on, you’re here. Everything’s fine.’ But he said even when he was doing those compressions, he heard those last breaths, he just knew it was over. When you hear that coupled with the 911 call, Chris, that was the most emotional moment for me right before walking out of this courtroom just a few moments ago.”

The third hinge arrived as the combat veteran testified: “A man who had been blown up three times, who had held dying soldiers in his arms, who knew the sound of a body giving up—that man tried to save Austin Metcalf. He pressed on his chest. He watched the blood. He heard the last breaths. And when the other coach said, ‘He’s breathing again,’ Redmond didn’t say a word. Because he knew. He had heard that sound before. That wasn’t breathing. That was goodbye. And twelve jurors heard it too.”

Yeah. I just like reading the notes of the day, what happened. I got chills just reading it. You just think of the chaos of the moment and the fact that this was a high school track meet, and suddenly you have a combat war veteran trying to save the life of a young man who had just been stabbed. What did the jury look like in all of this? When things got emotional, what did the jury look like?

“Of course, throughout the day as some of this testimony is going on, the jury’s mixed, kind of evenly split between men and women. You have the people who are just kind of shaking their heads, closing their eyes, maybe looking away. But when I saw real emotion—where tissue had to be handed out to some of the men on the jury, no less, Chris—was during that 911 call. It went on for maybe ten or twelve minutes. You heard the other coach, Coach Thedford, who wasn’t a witness but his name was established, on the phone. ‘Hey, we got a kid that just been stabbed. They’re saying it was another student from another school. They don’t know him.’ But it wasn’t really what was being said by the coach who was on the phone with the operator. It’s what you could hear in the background. All the shouting again. All the ‘Come on, Austin. Stay with me.’ There was a point in time, Chris, you can literally hear the rhythmic chest compression. You can just hear it against the bleachers. I looked over at the jury, and you see a couple—two or three men wiping their eyes. Of course, a couple of the women had their faces in their hands. Tears were falling. Not visceral crying to where it’s audible, but you could see the motion was definitely running throughout that jury as they were listening.”

The fourth hinge landed as the 911 call played: “You couldn’t see the stabbing. You couldn’t see the knife. But you could hear the chest compressions. Rhythmic. Desperate. Against metal bleachers. One coach was on the phone. Another was pumping Austin’s heart with his hands. Another was breathing into his mouth. And somewhere in the background, a seventeen-year-old boy was telling his coach, ‘He put his hands on me.’ That’s not a confession. That’s not a denial. That’s the sound of a life ending and another life hanging in the balance. And the jury heard every second of it.”

Yeah. And I just think of the defense part of this as well, because there is no question about the fact that Carmelo Anthony stabbed Austin Metcalf. The question is, was this murder? For a lot of these cross-examinations today where you would have the emotional testimony of what people witnessed, how would you characterize how the defense is going about trying to weather the storm of so much emotion coming from what Carmelo Anthony allegedly did?

“Yeah, Chris. The defense didn’t really attack as aggressively as I thought they would during this emotional testimony, which could be looked at in a positive or negative way depending on which side of the fence you’re on. But one of the questions that the defense attorney asked every single witness—they were talking about the tents. A lot of these coaches, being coaches in competitive sports and being in the culture of track and field, were talking about track and field culture. How each tent is kind of like your locker room. For example, if you’re in the NBA or the NFL, you have two locker rooms, and players don’t go back and forth between each other’s locker rooms. They were trying to explain that the tents were kind of the same thing. You might walk by and see a friend that you know, say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ but you’re not hanging out under the tents.”

“But what the defense kept harping on with each witness—there was the whole idea of the rain delay, that the rain was coming down. Centennial High School, where Carmelo Anthony went, was the only school that did not have a tent posted up that day. He kept saying that to each witness. ‘Did you know that Centennial High School did not have a tent?’ And they were, ‘No, I was unaware.’ And then he would follow up saying, ‘Well, it would make sense for a student to want to get out of the rain.’ And they said, ‘That’s a fair assessment. No one wants to get drenched.’ He asked that question pertinently with every single witness. I understand the generality of the question, but I don’t know what that question has to do with a first-degree murder charge. Other than that, Chris, he didn’t really harp on anything in an aggressive manner with any of this emotional testimony going on here today.”

The fifth hinge landed as the coach described walking with Carmelo: “Coach Hooper put his arm around a seventeen-year-old boy who had just stabbed someone. They walked around the track. The coach said, ‘You stabbed someone, son?’ And Carmelo said, ‘He put his hands on me. Yeah, I stabbed him.’ The coach said, ‘If that kid dies, your whole life changes today.’ Carmelo said, ‘He’s not going to die.’ Then he started crying. That’s not the reaction of a cold-blooded killer. That’s not the reaction of an innocent victim either. That’s the reaction of a child who just did something he can never take back. And twelve jurors have to decide whether that moment defines the rest of his life.”

One witness that stood out to me was Vincent Hooper. He was the head football coach, and a lot of these coaches coach track of course at Heritage High School. He was someone who was with Carmelo Anthony right after all of this happened. There’s no question that after Anthony allegedly stabs Austin Metcalf, he runs. The question is, was he running because he knew what he did and it was murder and he was trying to flee, or was it a situation where he was defending himself and he was just trying to get away from the situation? What stood out to you about what Vincent Hooper had to say as far as what Carmelo Anthony was doing in the moments after he had stabbed Austin Metcalf?

“So before we talk Hooper, Chris, we got to establish the moments before Carmelo got to Hooper. There was another coach—an athletic trainer, one of the girls’ coaches with another opposing school’s track and field team. She was saying where she was when she heard the commotion. She had CPR training, so she ran to Austin to try to render aid. When she got over there, she heard all the kids saying, ‘Oh, that kid right there, he stabbed Austin. That one right there.’ They’re pointing at him. So she turns around, looks at him, and calls him out. She says whatever she says to him. Carmelo stops. And as soon as she stops, Coach Hooper’s right there. She looks to Coach Hooper saying, ‘They said he stabbed this kid, Austin Metcalf. Don’t let Carmelo Anthony leave.’”

“So Hooper’s like, ‘What do you mean stab?’ He’s flustered. He said he didn’t even register what was really going on. He heard the commotion. He saw his students running and they’re saying the stabbing thing, but he said it just wasn’t really computing in his head. So he looked to Carmelo Anthony, who was standing right next to him, and he said he just put his arm around him and they just went walking around the track. Hooper said that he looked at him and said, ‘You stabbed someone, son?’ And then Carmelo responds to him, ‘He put his hands on me. Yeah, I stabbed him.’ Hooper says he looked at him and told him, ‘Well, you know, if that kid dies, your whole life changes today.’ And then he said Carmelo looked back at him and said, ‘Well, he’s not going to die.’ Then Hooper said, ‘Okay, but if he does,’ and before he could even finish, Carmelo started crying, and they just continued to walk.”

“And Coach Hooper said that he felt that Carmelo’s emotions were genuine. He said he didn’t feel that they were some kind of fabrication. He was literally crying moments after what happened. So it was kind of this intimate moment he was describing. You’re looking at a seventeen-year-old kid who just made the biggest mistake of his life here. That really stood out to me, Chris. Just the intimacy of what he was talking about. He’s just walking with this kid whose life clearly has changed in the last year since April 2025.”

Yeah. And to think again about what his reality may be if this is a guilty verdict. Of course, it’s only day one of this trial of Carmelo Anthony facing a charge of first-degree murder. Cody Thomas from Court TV, just an amazing job today. I know those are long hours in there following every single detail. But it’s great for us because, of course, we can’t have cameras in the courtroom to see it for ourselves. So your eyes, you’re our ears in there. Thanks as always for taking the time. We appreciate it.

“Thanks for having me, Chris. Happy to be here.”

The final hinge arrived as the day ended: “Day one is over. The prosecution showed grainy video and called a combat veteran who described last breaths. The defense asked every witness if they knew Centennial didn’t have a tent. Carmelo sat stoic. The Metcalf family wept. And twelve jurors—three Asian women, one Middle Eastern woman, one woman of color, and seven white men—have to decide: was this murder, self-defense, or something in between? The knife was open. The rain was falling. The tent was the wrong color. And a seventeen-year-old boy’s future hangs on what happened in four and a half minutes that no camera clearly captured. This trial is just beginning. But the verdict is already being written in the hearts of twelve people who saw everything and nothing today.”

That will do it for “On the Case” presented by Law & Crime. Subscribe to us on YouTube and Spotify. And we’re also now streaming on Peacock. I’m Chris Stewart. We’ll see you next time.