Furious protests have erupted in Texas after a black high school athlete was convicted of murdering a white teenager.
After three hours of deliberations by a jury, Karmelo Anthony, 19, was found guilty of fatally stabbing Austin Metcalf at a Frisco high school track meet in April 2025.
As the verdict was delivered, Anthony was seen visibly shaking and sobbing before he was immediately taken into custody.
The 19-year-old had previously admitted to stabbing Mr Metcalf, but his lawyers argued he had acted purely in "self-defence".
The case has swiftly moved into the sentencing phase, with jurors in Colin County now tasked with deciding how long the killer will spend behind bars.
If they decide the stabbing was not carried out in "sudden passion", the 19-year-old could be handed down a life sentence.
Before the jury headed into sentencing deliberations, Anthony's mother begged them for mercy from the witness stand.
She told the court: “He’s my oldest. He’ll always be my baby. I love him very much.
“I know my son, and he’s very sorry for what he did. Please have mercy on my son."
Tensions spilled over outside the courtroom between 200 demonstrators who had gathered outside, both to support and denounce the murderer.
One protester could be heard yelling: "This whole thing’s been racist. We didn’t make it racist!"
Another slammed the racial composition of the jurors over its lack of black members.
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Despite it being made up of white, Asian and Hispanic people, they screamed: “Tell those white folks, why is a black boy in front of an all white jury?
"When has a white boy been in front of an all black jury? Never!”
Before the trial began, supporters of Anthony had raised more than $625,000 (£461,000) to go towards his legal defence.
During proceedings, the court heard that prior to the stabbing, Antony - who attended a different school to Mr Metcalf - had been seated at the wrong tent at the high school track meet and was asked to leave more than a dozen times.
Jurors were told the 17-year-old student approached Anthony to ask him to move on, with the killer replying "touch me and you'll find out" and "if you want me to move, you have to move me".
Students present at the meet told the court that Anthony became increasingly aggressive as the confrontation dragged on, with one witness saying he appeared to be "looking for a fight", while Mr Metcalf replied: "I'm not going to fight you at a track meet."
A physical altercation then broke out between the pair, before the 19-year-old pulled out a knife from his back and stabbed the teenager in the chest.
Mr Metcalf's father, Jeff, has spoken out about the case throughout proceedings, describing his son to Fox News as "the light of my life".
"This person made a bad choice and affected both his family and my family forever," he said.
Despite the pain caused by his son's death, the grieving father has expressed forgiveness towards the killer.
He said: "People ask me, how can you forgive this other person?
"I forgive the other person because the forgiveness is not for him. The forgiveness is for me so I can have peace. His life is destroyed. My life is destroyed."
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