Jeff Metcalf buried his 17-year-old son after a stabbing at a high school track meet. He sat through the trial. He delivered a victim impact statement. And when the moment came for Karmelo Anthony's parents to face what their son had done, Metcalf says, they were already gone.
Metcalf, the father of Austin Metcalf, told Fox News host Will Cain that Anthony's mother, Kala Hayes, and father, Andrew Anthony, left the McKinney, Texas, courthouse after the guilty verdict and never came back, not for sentencing, not for the statements from the family whose child was killed.
The New York Post reported that Metcalf expressed both grief and a pointed frustration at the absence. He said he had hoped the Anthony family might show some recognition of what happened. Instead, he got silence, and then a media tour.
Metcalf's account is direct. Asked by Cain whether Anthony's parents stayed for the sentencing phase, he did not hold back:
"They weren't there for the sentencing and they were not there for victim impact statements. They left that poor child up there by himself."
That last line carries weight. Metcalf was not only criticizing the parents for disrespecting his family. He was pointing out that they abandoned their own son at the most consequential moment of his life. Anthony, now 19, stood in a Texas courtroom and received a 35-year prison sentence with no family in the gallery.
When Cain asked Metcalf whether he had ever received an apology from Anthony's family, at any point since the April 2025 stabbing at Frisco's Kuykendall Stadium, the answer was one word: "No."
Metcalf added:
"I was hoping for some accountability maybe and some remorse. Neither one was shown."
He also noted that he has not spoken to Anthony's parents at any point since his son was killed. Not once.
A Collin County jury convicted Karmelo Anthony of murder for the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet in April 2025. Austin Metcalf, 17, was killed with what prosecutors described as a $13 Walmart knife that pierced his heart.
The jury rejected the defense's claim of "sudden passion," which would have reduced the sentence. Anthony received 35 years. Breitbart reported that witness testimony indicated Anthony instigated the conflict and was asked to leave the tent area up to 15 times before the stabbing. Anthony himself told police after the incident, "I'm not alleged, I did it."
He must serve half of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
Fox News reported that Judge John Roach, who presided over the trial, defended the verdict and the fairness of the proceedings. Roach had barred cameras and livestreaming from the courtroom, calling it "an easy decision" aimed at preventing outside pressure on the jury. He stated that his "primary goal in every case is to make sure the defendant and the prosecution get a fair trial. Period."
Roach also offered a notable observation about the defendant himself: "He seems like a nice young man who committed a crime and he understands today more than any day before the consequences of committing a crime like he did."
While Jeff Metcalf grieved and waited for accountability, Anthony's family took a different path. The day after sentencing, Kala Hayes went on CBS and declared: "My son is no murderer." She added: "My son was defending himself, and that's what hurts so bad."
Hayes also reportedly berated witnesses who testified at trial, claiming that "everyone lied on the stand." She told Court TV that jurors had already made up their minds before the trial began.
Anthony's grandmother, Toni Hayes, was filmed shouting "Racist!" as she left the courthouse after the verdict.
The family's posture, absent from the courtroom but present on camera, tells its own story. They did not stay to hear what Austin Metcalf's father had to say about losing his son. But they found time to sit for interviews insisting the system was rigged against them.
Anthony's legal team filed a notice of appeal less than 24 hours after the guilty verdict. Six lawyers have agreed to represent him pro bono. The appeal process could take several months, though it does not guarantee a new trial.
Anthony had previously claimed he was "penniless," yet his defense attracted more than $600,000 in crowdfunding. A linked headline from the New York Post references that a GoSendGo crowdfunding page raising $625,000 for Anthony was pulled after his conviction.
So the resources were there. The public sympathy machine was there. What was not there, according to Jeff Metcalf, was the defendant's own family, at the moment it mattered most.
Just The News reported that the Collin County jury deliberated for two and a half hours before reaching the 35-year sentence. Anthony's mother, Kayla Hayes, was the only witness called by the defense during the sentencing phase. She testified: "He's my oldest, he's my firstborn. He will always be my baby. I love him very much."
She said that on the stand. Then, by Jeff Metcalf's account, she left.
Sunny Hostin, the former federal prosecutor and co-host of ABC's "The View," weighed in on the case, suggesting Anthony may not have had a fair jury. She stated on the program:
"You're supposed to have a jury of your peers, you're not just supposed to strike someone because they're black. I don't think he had a jury of his peers, so on appeal there is a legitimate thing."
Hostin referenced Batson challenges, a legal mechanism used when one side argues the other is dismissing potential jurors on unconstitutional grounds such as race, ethnicity, or gender. Whether Anthony's appellate team will press that argument remains to be seen.
But the suggestion that the trial was racially tainted runs directly into Judge Roach's own statements. Roach said he had no prior relationship with the Metcalf family and stood by both the process and the verdict. He took specific steps, banning cameras, limiting outside interference, to protect the integrity of the proceedings.
The pattern here is familiar. A jury hears the evidence, deliberates, and convicts. The defendant's family and media allies then reframe the outcome as a product of bias rather than facts. The witnesses who testified are accused of lying. The jurors are accused of prejudice. The judge is treated as suspect. And the victim's family is left standing in a courtroom that the defendant's own parents could not be bothered to stay in.
Violent crimes like other recent high-profile stabbing convictions remind us that juries take these cases seriously. The question is whether the public conversation around them does the same.
Jeff Metcalf did something worth noting. Even in his grief, he expressed empathy toward Karmelo Anthony, a young man who killed his son. That is not weakness. That is the kind of moral seriousness that accountability requires.
What he asked for in return was not extraordinary. He wanted the defendant's family to stay in the room. To hear what their son's actions cost another family. To show, even briefly, that they understood a 17-year-old boy was dead.
They gave him nothing. No presence. No apology. No acknowledgment. Just a CBS interview and a shout of "Racist!" on the courthouse steps.
Cases like this one, and other troubling Texas cases involving parental responsibility, force a basic question about what we expect from the people closest to a crime. Not legal guilt. Just the bare minimum of showing up.
A father who lost his son sat through every minute of a murder trial. The parents of the young man who took that life walked out before the sentence was read. That contrast says more than any appeal brief ever will.