That’s fair. But people are asserting things out of nowhere, like they invented a scene in their head and insist it’s what happened.
What is reported is that a kid went to sit in an area set up for the other school. He was asked to leave and didn’t. Now, the people asking him to leave AFAIK are students, so I’m not sure that they had any authority to kick anyone out. They should have gotten someone in charge to intervene if there was really something wrong.
One kid decided to play bouncer and physically remove the guy, despite being warned that he was armed, and got stabbed when he grabbed him, and died. A stupid way to go IMO.
Everything else, about an angry mob swarming him and attacking him, and him feeling trapped and lashing out with a knife to escape his white captors, that just some bizarre story born from fantasy.
It’s also at odds with Anthony asking if the other guy was okay. If you just “escaped” that’s not how you’d react.
But yes, I’m sure there are plenty of details we don’t know, and might learn as the legal process continues.
It’s not a strawman when it’s what people are actually claiming.
But, okay. Now that I asked for cites, “nobody even said it”. If you’re willing to back down from this fiction and focus on what little we actually know, I’d be relieved to do that.
The only difference in your names is Zei vs Chi. And inventing wildly unsupported, unhinged context to add to events in the news is the sort of thing they do too.
I think those statements aren’t intended as what we literally know literally happened. I think they’re meant as counterbalancing hypotheticals to the likewise-invented scene that some are pushing (mostly not here), of an out-of-control black thug who just flipped out for no reason and attacked a bunch of peaceful, innocent good white boys.
From all the more we know so far, either one of those scenarios could be correct, or more likely, somewhere in between. And it causes considerably more harm to jump straight to the conclusion that he’s an out-of-control thug (even if it’s true) than to jump to the conclusion that he’s an innocent victim, so there’s good reason to push back in that direction.
If I was getting hassled by a group of racial others, regardless of whether I knew I’d been intruding in their space, I would greatly fear leaving. Because as soon as I was out of a brighly lit area full of witnesses I’d expect to be beaten pretty thoroughly.
That black kid was utterly trapped. By his own reasonable expectations if nothing else.
I’m a generic white guy. My immediately previous GF was Afro-Caribbean. We spent a lot of time late at night in the predominantly Afro- and Latin- parts of inner Miami. I loved the experience but sometimes the experience didn’t love me. Wandering outside alone would’ve been stupid / suicidal.
Better to avoid the situation altogether. But once you failed to do that, the best way out is usually not meek retreat.
The story of him being an “out of control thug” is definitely more far-fetched. That doesn’t fit anything. He was remorseful and concerned afterward and had no idea how severe his actions were.
He’s also (as far as I can tell) from a good family and I don’t believe he has been in serious trouble before.
I can only imagine those hypotheticals are manufactured by racists. It’s akin to eating the cats and eating the dogs,
I am. I objected to the repeated implication that people were only yelling and there was no physical contact, but didn’t phrase it properly in my intended rush out the door. Chronos and LSLGuy covered the rest of my very-poorly argued thoughts.
This is a complicated case, and I have sympathies for both sides. But this comment from the prosecutor sounds like bullshit:
“He tossed the knife immediately after. Why toss the knife?Someone who’s scared doesn’t do that,” said Wirskye.
No, that’s exactly what a scared person does. A confident and calm person would hang onto a weapon. You toss it away in a panic if you’re scared and confused.
Granted, as I said earlier in this thread, the accused was being asked to leave and refused to, and a scared person would have left and not lashed out. He wasn’t cornered; you don’t corner a person you’re trying to kick out. But the prosecutor’s argument is still a really dumb one.
The information I’ve gleaned from reporting leads me to believe that Anthony lashed out in anger, I am not sure why. But I don’t think he intended to actually kill anyone based on his actions afterward. Just my opinion on what it looks like to me. I don’t think a self defense claim is credible, but he also should get some leniency because he doesn’t seem like a cold-blooded murderer and aside from this tragic incident he seems like a good kid. Two good kids had promising futures cut short that day.
I’ve literally been in that position once. I was at a birthday party in a bar, and the bar manager had a melt down and started screaming at us to get out of his bar. Except he had us backed into a corner, so the only way to leave would be to push past him, and none of us wanted to get close to this obviously deranged person. So we didn’t leave, and he just kept getting angrier that we were still in his bar.
Nobody got stabbed, but some drinks were thrown, and the bar manager ate at least one solid punch before we got out.
So if that’s the case, and the stabbing victim (possibly with others) physically backed him into a location he couldn’t leave (which would be difficult because this was outdoors on the side of a field) then that might lead to a viable defense. That would be hard to prove, and since it’s an affirmative defense, the burden is on the defense to prove it to the jury.
IIRC, the victim was stabbed as he was trying to pull Anthony out of his team’s area. (Which was wrong; it shouldn’t have been physical.)
Yeah, I have no idea if its a viable defense in this case, I’m just saying, “Telling someone to do something while also preventing them from doing it,” is definitely a thing that can happen, especially in high stress situations.
See every encounter with cops shouting “Don’t move” and “Get on the ground” at the same time for another example.
I can see why you have that take on it, but I think you’re missing the prosecutor’s point. Anthony’s defense is built on the idea that he feared for his life — that he was facing a threatening crowd. If that’s true, someone who genuinely believes they’re in danger doesn’t drop their only means of protection and then run. You’d expect them to create distance first and only discard the weapon once they’re safe. Dropping it immediately undercuts the idea that he still felt threatened in that moment.
Honestly, the dominant emotion on both sides looks like pride. Neither person wanted to back down. I’m still unsure about Anthony’s intentions. On one hand, he stabbed Metcalf directly in the heart, and he did it immediately without any prior brandishing or warning with the knife. On the other hand, his reaction afterward — asking police whether the kid was okay — doesn’t fit the profile of someone acting with cold, deliberate malice.