A 75-page court filing paints a disturbing picture of the months leading up to Karmelo Anthony's fatal stabbing of Frisco, Texas, teenager Austin Metcalf, including gun photos, threats to kill, and a girlfriend's ignored warning to school staff hours before the attack.
Prosecutors in Collin County filed a notice of extraneous offenses on May 8, 2026, cataloging dozens of alleged prior acts by Anthony, threats of gun violence, text messages describing uncontrollable rage, discussions about committing robberies, and videos showing him holding what appeared to be firearms. Fox News Digital obtained the document, which lays out a timeline stretching back more than a year before the April 2, 2025, stabbing at a high school track meet that killed Metcalf.
Anthony was convicted of killing Metcalf and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He has appealed. But the court filing, which prosecutors prepared to introduce at trial, raises hard questions about what was known, what was missed, and whether anyone who saw the warning signs acted in time.
The earliest exchange cited in the filing dates to December 23, 2023, between Anthony and his girlfriend, Valeria Torres Perez. In that exchange, Anthony described what happened when he lost his temper: "When I get mad i see red." "When I get mad i blackout." "When I get mad i cant control myself." He also wrote, "When I get mad my eyes change color."
In the same exchange, Anthony described what prosecutors allege was an assault on another person: "He posted where he was at and we pulled up and got em."
The document is not a judicial finding that any of the alleged acts occurred. Prosecutors filed it to put the defense on notice about evidence they intended to present. The filing also warns that some screenshots capture only portions of the full exchanges. But the sheer volume of material, and the escalation visible in the timeline, speaks for itself.
By May 2024, the allegations shifted from rage to weapons. An Instagram photo dated May 5, 2024, allegedly showed Anthony holding a firearm while posing with a group. Twelve days later, on May 17, he allegedly texted Perez about another woman: "im shooting her."
On June 10, 2024, he allegedly wrote to Perez directly: "how many bullets uu want coming out of ur chest." Six days after that: "imma beat ur a**."
The threats did not taper off. In September 2024, Anthony allegedly wrote "gun to the head" and said he would cut another person's brakes. By November, he allegedly wrote about shooting something up and referenced gloves, a rope, and getting his hands on a "switch", slang for a device that converts a semi-automatic pistol to fully automatic fire.
A November 13, 2024, video showed Anthony holding what appeared to be a firearm. On January 4, 2025, another video allegedly showed him aiming what appeared to be a firearm at a home before running away. That same month, he allegedly discussed committing robberies.
The case has drawn national attention not only for the violence itself but for the disturbing social media reaction that followed Anthony's conviction, including users mocking the slain teenager online.
On February 19, 2025, Anthony discussed buying a firearm and an extended magazine in a text conversation with a contact named Anthony Mendoza. A week later, on February 26, a separate exchange from a different phone number included a discussion about carrying a firearm. That same month, Anthony was suspended from school for fighting.
The final weeks before the killing were the most alarming. On March 8, 2025, Anthony allegedly texted Perez: "imma f****** murder u... yo friends go die... sho them ts."
Six days later, on March 14, Anthony allegedly assaulted Perez. Thirteen days after that, roughly March 27, he allegedly threatened her with a deadly weapon and referenced having a gun.
Then came the morning of April 2, 2025. Perez reported Anthony to a staff member at Centennial High School in Frisco, telling them he had been driving by her home and refusing to let her end their relationship. Hours earlier, at 12:59 a.m., a text attributed to Anthony read: "im lowk on the verge." About 35 minutes later, he allegedly repeated and emphasized the phrase.
Later that day, at a high school track meet, Anthony stabbed Austin Metcalf. Metcalf, a Frisco teenager, died. National Review's editors noted that Metcalf was unarmed at the time and that Anthony stabbed him once in the chest with a concealed knife, penetrating his heart.
Anthony confessed almost immediately. Breitbart reported that when police confronted him, he said: "I'm not alleged, I did it." Witnesses testified he had been asked to leave the area up to 15 times before the fatal confrontation.
At sentencing, Austin Metcalf's father, Jeff Metcalf, addressed Anthony directly:
"You're free to make choices all you want, but you're not free from those consequences. You will face those consequences starting today."
Austin's mother delivered her own statement:
"You may have just been given a sentence of 35 years behind bars. You can consider yourself lucky because I've been sentenced to a lifetime without my son."
Anthony received 35 years without possibility of parole until half the sentence is served. But the legal fight did not end there.
The filing also traces Anthony's alleged misconduct back to his school years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, citing "numerous acts of assaultive conduct." It describes alleged racist and anti-gay messages, discussions about narcotics, and additional photographs and videos involving firearms. The document does not provide a formal mental-health diagnosis or establish that Anthony was experiencing a psychiatric crisis before the stabbing.
Some Democratic politicians have seized on the case to advance claims about racial bias in the justice system. Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico told the Washington Free Beacon that the absence of Black jurors was "the only evidence you need to really prove this system is not working for black Texans." Anthony's defense team argued the prosecution struck all three Black jurors from the pool.
Anthony's legal team won a procedural victory on August 19, 2026, when the original trial judge, John Roach, was removed from the case. Roach had told WFAA TV that jurors "got it right" in convicting Anthony, a public statement that visiting Judge Sid Harle found compromised his impartiality. The AP reported that Judge Michael Chitty was assigned to preside over all further proceedings.
Anthony's lawyers framed the removal as proof of systemic problems with the trial. "Today's ruling answers a fundamental question: whether a reasonable fully informed observer would see Judge Roach's conduct and believe that he could fairly and impartially consider a motion for new trial," they said.
On August 22, 2026, however, the new judge denied Anthony's bid for a retrial. The New York Post reported that prosecutors disclosed during the retrial hearings a 2023 text message in which Anthony wrote "imma shoot the school up tmr", a threat that had been kept from the jury during the original trial.
That detail alone, a school shooting threat, never presented to the jury that convicted him, undercuts the defense narrative that Anthony was railroaded. If anything, the jury heard less than the full picture of who they were judging.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett and other progressive voices have pushed claims about the jury's composition, but the factual record tells a different story, one where the evidence of Anthony's conduct is extensive and documented across months.
High-profile murder cases that create retrial motions and procedural disputes are not new. The legal maneuvering in the Anthony case echoes other contested convictions where defense teams have pushed aggressively for new proceedings on procedural grounds, sometimes overshadowing the underlying facts of the crime.
Fox News Digital reached out to Anthony's attorney, Russell Wilson, for comment. No response was noted.
The 75-page filing is a catalog of alleged escalation: rage texts in late 2023, gun photos and shooting threats through 2024, robbery talk and weapons purchases in early 2025, an alleged assault and death threats against his girlfriend in March, and a final "on the verge" message hours before a teenager bled out at a track meet.
Perez reported Anthony to school staff that morning. The stabbing happened anyway. The document does not say what the school did with her warning, or whether anyone contacted law enforcement.
Austin Metcalf is dead. Karmelo Anthony sits in a Texas prison with a 35-year sentence. And a 75-page record of alleged threats, weapons, and violence sits in a Collin County court file, evidence of a pattern that, by the time anyone acted on it, had already ended a young man's life.
When every warning sign is visible in hindsight and a teenager is still buried, the system did not work. It does not matter which politician tries to make it about something else.