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EXCLUSIVE: More than $514,000 has been donated to the “Help Karmelo Anthony Official Fund” on the crowd-sourcing site GiveSendGo.com.
This half-million-dollar sum is the result of an alleged murder that occurred at a track meet in Frisco, Texas, on April 2.
The victim was 17-year-old Austin Metcalf of Memorial High School, who died in a deadly stabbing. The suspect, 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony of Centennial High School, was just released from jail on bond after lawyers reduced his bail from $1 million.
Anthony has told police that he “did it” – meaning the murder – but has claimed it was in self-defense. He has been charged with first-degree murder.
Now, GiveSendGo is leading in online fundraising for the Anthony’s family legal expenses. Other major crowd-sourcing platforms, including GoFundMe and Kickstarter, have not platformed a campaign for Anthony on their sites.
But GiveSendGo co-founder Jacob Wells and his leadership team are featuring Anthony’s campaign.
“How proud am I of this campaign? I don’t, I wouldn’t say I’m proud at all,” Wells told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
“I have no pride in having this being on GiveSendGo. I just have appreciation for what GiveSendGo is doing in the midst of these tragic moments, which is standing on principle, which is loving people even in the midst of very hard and dark places.”
Wells admitted that there have been other campaigns on his site, like a foster home for boys fundraiser. But Anthony’s fundraiser is not one of those.
Wells claimed his company has only ever removed campaigns for causes deemed “illegal,” or raising money under false pretenses. He says he’s taken down a fundraiser for fraudulently raising money for travel expenses while the organizer intended to use the money to buy a gun.
Wells declined to directly say whether there were any conversations about removing the campaign, but insists that “pretty much” everyone involved in leadership at the company has been supportive of platforming it.
Wells compared the Anthony fund to the one his platform hosted for Kyle Rittenhouse in 2020. That effort raised over $250,000 after Rittenhouse shot three men in Kineshoa, Wisconsin, during the Jacob Blake riots.
But now Anthony’s campaign has raised more than twice that number, and is looking for more. As Wells and his colleagues have faced backlash and death threats, he said he’s had a conversation about donating the profits of the fundraiser to the Metcalf family to try and make a point that they aren’t just platforming Anthony’s fund for financial gain.
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Wells has also paid special attention to this campaign in recent weeks, as it’s been one of the biggest and most notorious his platform has ever hosted. He’s gone out of his way to take note of the types of people who are donating, and why they are donating.
And to him, some of these people are donating for the “wrong reasons.”
“There will always be people who are donating for the wrong reasons, on any campaign. There are people that believe the best way forward is racial division. That’s what they believe. So they’re going to stoke the flames of racial division however they can,” Wells said. “When you live in free societies, which we do, there’s a price to pay, and that is it allows for some people to do things that might not be good. And I think people do that all the time.”
Wells pointed specifically to “championing a racial narrative” as the wrong reason for wanting to donate to the campaign, when asked.
“When someone is championing a racial narrative that is divisive and not unifying, then I would claim that that’s a wrong reason to be donating. And there are people that have donated that are making claims that are divisive and not unifying. And those are in some of the comments. ” Unfortunately, in free societies, people can say stuff that is divisive and not unifying,” Wells said.
“They go both ways too. We’ve seen people who have made donations because donating is a way for you to comment on the campaign page… you have people that are on the other side of the aisle and they’ll donate the minimum $5 donation just so they can post a comment being derogatory to the Anthony family.”
Still, Wells claims that the “overwhelming majority” of engagement on the fundraiser has not been “derogatory.”
Wells declined to point to any specific comments that represent the “wrong” reasons. However, some public comments reviewed by Fox News Digital reflect Wells’ “racial narrative” reference.
“Honestly, even if Karmelo stabbed Austin for no reason at all, I’d still donate and support. Whites have gotten away with killing us for hundreds of years. I could care less about White lives,” read a comment with 53 likes.
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Wells blamed “right-wing outrage” for driving support to the fundraiser.
“The outrage of the right has fueled the response of the other side,” Wells said, adding that he saw similar patterns occur due to the left-wing response to the Rittenhouse fund and when his site hosted a campaign to support Daniel Penny after killing Jordan Neely in defense of New York City subway riders in 2023.
Representatives for the Anthony family have referenced race while comparing Anthony’s situation to Rittenhouse’s and Penny’s.
Next Generation Action Network (NGAN) president Dominique Alexander made the comparison at a press conference on April 17.
“Because these racist bigots try to prevent us from standing up for our baby, our boy, he should be afforded the same rights that Kyle Rittenhouse had, Daniel Penny and all the people who have claimed whatever their defense was – he should be afforded the same right,” Alexander said.
Anthony was recently moved from his home to an “undisclosed location to ensure his immediate safety” following an “alarming increase in death threats, continued harassment, and physical intimidation targeted at the family’s home,” NGAN said in a statement last week.
Meanwhile, the Metcalf family has been victims of swatting in recent weeks, the Frisco Police Department (FPD) previously confirmed. Swatting is when a 911 call is made, usually to report a fake violent crime, to get police and sometimes even SWAT teams, to respond to the address given by the caller.
Metcalf’s father, Jeff Metcalf, previously told Fox News, “I want to clarify something right off to start because I’ve already heard some rumors and gossip. This was not a race thing. This is not a political thing.
“Do not politicize this. It’s not … this is a human being thing. This person made a bad choice and affected both his family and my family forever.”
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