Karmelo Anthony and Austin Metcalf

On the morning of Wednesday, April 2 a high school track athlete was stabbed and killed by a member of an opposing high school track team in Frisco, TX.

The incident occurred before the beginning of the championship track meet of the Frisco Independent School District. Teams were gathered under tents representing the various schools at the meet. Karmelo Anthony, a 17-year-old track athlete at Frisco Centennial High School, was sitting under the tent for Frisco Memorial High School’s track team. Austin Metcalf, a 17-year-old track athlete for Frisco Memorial, told Anthony to move and sit with his team. Anthony, while reaching into his backpack, apparently replied, “Touch me and see what happens.” Metcalf then pushed Anthony, who produced a knife and stabbed Metcalf. Anthony ran but was quickly arrested by the local police department. Metcalf died at the scene in the arms of his twin brother, Hunter. He was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead just before 11am. Anthony admitted to the police that he stabbed Metcalf, but insisted he was protecting himself, and asked the police if they thought Metcalf would be okay. Anthony has been charged with first-degree murder and is being held at the Collins County jail on a $1 million bond.

Words cannot express the horror of such tragedies. The consequences resulting from an altercation of likely less than 60 seconds will roll into the decades. Austin Metcalf is dead, gone from his family and friends forever. Karmelo Anthony will spend decades, perhaps the rest of his life, behind bars. And for what? For an argument over territory and bruised pride. Has the ancient proverb ever proved more true: “Pride goes before disaster, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Pro 16:18)? Two young men, filled with school pride and territorial instincts (one for his school and the other for his personal space), engaged in a confrontation that never should have happened and never should have ended in death.

Why did Anthony bring a knife to a track meet? Why was he carrying a knife at all, to a track meet or anywhere else? I don’t know Frisco, TX. I’ve never been there. My daughter and her husband live there and she’s not mentioned to me that it’s a dangerous place. Was Anthony threatened by forces in his life that inspired him to carry a knife? Surely another adolescent pushing him was not a threat to his life. Or was it, at least in his mind? Did he live in such circumstances that he expected to be seriously threatened by any and every one, and so was prepared for that? Why did he pull out a knife? Why did he stab Metcalf, rather than merely threaten him with the knife to leave him be? Or, better yet, why not just walk away and go sit with his own team? What went through his mind in what could not have been more than mere moments between being pushed and stabbing the young man who pushed him?

What has happened to our culture that violence is often regarded as a legitimate response to even the most minor of slights? We’ve all read the headlines. A sub shop employee is shot dead, and another put in critical condition, because a customer was upset over too much mayo on his sandwich. An 18-year-old young man working at a breakfast restaurant is shot dead by a customer who unexpectedly grew agitated over his food order. A woman, a mother of four, is shot dead by a customer at a fast food restaurant over food missing from the customer’s order. A six-year-old girl and her parents were shot (happily, not killed) by a man frustrated that the little girl’s basketball rolled into his yard and the child went to retrieve it. The pattern is often reproducible from incident to incident: someone gets too mad too quickly over a minor matter; the other responds by also getting too mad too quickly; both feel that they’ve been disrespected, and an argument ensues; then someone gets shot, or stabbed, and often killed.

According to a 2023 article published in the journal for the Association of American Medical Colleges, “Our nation’s firearm-related civilian death toll over the past 50 years exceeds the number of soldiers who perished in combat in all our wars combined.” Clearly, a lot of Americans are killing each other. And that’s just gun deaths. Austin Metcalf was not killed by a gun, but by a knife. And the point of this post is not the means by which so many are killed, but the senselessness of so many of those killings. People, again, seem to have embraced the idea that killing another person for minor offenses is a legitimate way of preserving their wounded pride. Lives are being lost and people are being incarcerated over the most petty of disputes. Why?

I have my thoughts on the matter. Of course, the fact that many in our culture are growing up without God on their radar is a big factor. Also, many of these killings seem to be committed by people who are in low-income and high-crime areas, so they may not have much investment in their communities. Their personal pride, then, becomes their most cherished possession. They also may have witnessed violence as a response to offenses. If people feel that they don’t have an investment in their communities because their communities don’t give them any reason to invest in them, then they may only invest in themselves. So, when they perceive themselves to be disrespected, even over a minor infraction, it tends to be blown out of proportion because their personal pride is all they have. “You need to treat me with respect, or else!” People who are invested in their relationship with God, in other meaningful relationships, and in their future, don’t tend to take small hurts too deeply, because there is more to them than what some stranger thinks of them, or says to them, or how a stranger treats them. They say to themselves, though not necessarily consciously, “I don’t know this person, and I’m not likely to ever see them again; there’s no point in getting that worked up over this.” Those who are not emotionally or spiritually invested in things outside themselves are more likely to take even minor insults as major acts of disrespect, and respond accordingly. In that sense, their response isn’t out of proportion at all, at least in their own minds. It’s perfectly within proportion to their being disrespected because, sadly, their pride is all they have. It’s not the too much mayo, or the missing fries, or a child going into their yard to retrieve a ball, or some other kid challenging why they are where they are. It’s that they have been disrespected, and that cannot be tolerated.

Jack Brewer, former NFL player, businessman, founder of NFL Players for Obama, co-chair of Black Voices, Trump Victory Finance Committee, former chair of the Athletes and Artist Committee of the Millennium Development Goals Awards at the United Nations, and advocate for Black youth and for strengthening ties between police departments and their communities (in other words, an extraordinarily accomplished man with a vision for the common good) spoke on Fox News about Metcalf and Anthony’s encounter. Brewer railed against the culture of music and movies, especially targeting Black youth, that glorfies violence and disrespect for women. He spoke of the need of parents to take up their responsibility of raising their children and being present for their children. Karmelo Anthony does have a father in his life. But somehow his father failed to raise his son in such a way that Anthony knew that bringing a knife to a track meet and meeting a challenge to his pride with violence were not legitimate options.

So, now one boy’s life is over, and another boy’s life is wasted. All the potential of both of these young men is gone. Something must be done. We cannot have a society where wounded pride over trivial matters becomes a life or death struggle. I don’t know what the answer is other than for parents to step up and dedicate their lives to raising their children in righteousness. As a nurse at a pediatric hospital, I would often feel deeply for the children of parents who obviously did not dedicate themselves to the well-being of their children, but lived for themselves. A father watching violent and sexually graphic movies in front of his five-year-old because that’s what Dad wants to watch; parents choosing to be absent from the hospital during their child’s admission, almost as if they regarded it as a break for themselves since their kid was being cared for by the nurses; family members cruelly eating in front of their hungry child who was not able to eat because of a gastric illness or in preparation for a procedure; parents complaining that their child was not being seen when it was obvious that the medical staff was focused on saving another child’s life (and sometimes leaving the hospital in frustration before their sick child is seen); mothers expecting their child to assume responsibility for their own well-being and medical care when they are far too young to do so (because she doesn’t want to be bothered with it), then blaming the child when they fail. Even if a person finds no reason to invest in the larger community, one would think they would regard their own children as worthy of their investment. But, no. Too often, it’s just … no.

Still, there are those parents who do invest in their children, who are heartily dedicated to giving their time and their wisdom to their children. It is a joy to care for their children as a nurse in the hospital. We don’t hear about those parents often enough because their children don’t often bring knives to track meets.

Of course, I have no idea what sort of home life Karmelo Anthony had. I have no idea how involved or invested in him his parents were. What I do know is that, for some reason, he felt the need to bring a knife to a track meet and all the upbringing he had received from the adults in his life was not enough to dissuade him from doing so. What I do know is that he felt his pride threatened by Metcalf, who himself felt the need to challenge Anthony’s presence at a spot he regarded as belonging to him and his team mates. What I do know is that this altercation resulted in Metcalf’s life being ended, and of Anthony’s life fallen apart. This must stop. We are destroying our children and, as a consequence, they are destroying each other.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.