Did Austin Metcalf, a Texas teenager stabbed to death in April 2025, earlier post on social media a photograph of guns along with a racist message? No, that's not true: Internet users copied a photo from a 2020 Reddit post, and used digital editing to create a non-existent Instagram handle. Police in Frisco, Texas have charged Karmelo Anthony, who is Black, with first-degree murder in the killing of Metcalf, who was white, at a high school track meet.
The fake Instagram post appeared in an April 6, 2025, post on X (archived here). The apparent handle of the Instagram account was "Austin_M3tcalf" and the post consisted of a photograph of the lower half of a person sitting in a vehicle holding a handgun, with what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle on their lap, along with the following racist text:
I dare one of those monkeys to show up to the track meet today...
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot)
In reality, the photograph did not stem from an April 2025 Instagram post, but rather a December 2020 post on Reddit (archived here), along with the caption "'Glock in my lap, everywhere I'm strapped.' A visual representation of poor financial decisions":
(Source: Reddit screenshot)
The "Austin_M3tcalf" Instagram handle was fake. No account using that handle existed as of April 7, 2025, and a Google search for that precise handle yielded only a handful of results, all of them dating to after the death of Metcalf.
Another Instagram account, with the handle "austinn.metcalff", contained various photos dating back to 2023, relating to Metcalf's high school football career, and appeared to be authentic.
On April 2, 2025, police in Frisco, Texas announced they had arrested and charged 17 year-old Karmelo Anthony with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Metcalf, who was also 17 years old.
