Dear Abby: My friendly relationship with my boss is falling apart

In the past few days, millions of people in Britain have realized, many of them for the first time, that their government is willing to go to extreme lengths to cover up a murder, as long as that murder involves a white man.

To this day, British authorities are hiding critical evidence involving the murder of 18-year-old college student Henry Nowak. No member of the public, not even the jury that just convicted Nowak’s murderer, a foreigner named Vickrum Digwa, has seen the photos and cellphone videos Digwa took, in which he chased Nowak down and mocked him as he died a slow and horrific death.

“You’re not going to get away with this big man,” Digwa said as Nowak struggled to breathe. Digwa also said, “you’re not dying bro,” and “you were recording me thinking you’re sick” (meaning “tough”). The judge ruled that the videos are simply too shocking, even for the jury in a murder case.

According to the Daily Mail’s reporting, “This clip was not played in court for being ‘too disturbing to be shown.'” Yes, too disturbing to be shown, which suggests it’s somehow even more disturbing than the body camera footage. We’re talking about a sadistic execution that’s been hidden from the public.

And speaking of the body cams, we also don’t have the full body camera footage of the police response to the murder. The footage cuts off the moment the authorities finally realize that Nowak has gone unconscious, more than 60 seconds after they dragged his body across the pavement and handcuffed him, and more than 15 minutes after he was first stabbed.

We were told, during the sentencing hearing, that officers supposedly reacted with shock when they began performing CPR on Nowak. That was supposedly the first time they realized he had a fatal chest wound. But strangely enough, the police haven’t released the full body camera footage of the moment the officers came to that realization. We have no idea what they said or did, specifically.

Yes, Nowak was seriously injured. He ultimately lost around 20% of his total blood volume. But the overall survival rate, when that same vein is injured by gunshot or stabbing, is around 20%. It’s not 0%. And Nowak was stabbed just down the street from a major trauma center.

Surgeons at the hospital could’ve inserted a tube into his chest and pumped out the blood. They could’ve sealed off the vein. But the authorities didn’t transport Nowak to the trauma hospital at any point. Instead, they arrested him and waited for the ambulance until he died.

Could the surgeons have saved Henry Nowak’s life? We obviously don’t know the answer to that question. But given all of this deception, Britons have no reason to trust the government’s pathologist in the case, who insisted that Nowak would’ve died no matter what, regardless of what the police did. The government didn’t even try to save Nowak. Instead, they engaged in a cover-up, which continues as we speak.

In that respect, and many other respects, the slaughter of Henry Nowak bears more than a passing resemblance to the execution of 17-year-old white high school junior Austin Metcalf at a track meet last year in Frisco, Texas.

Yesterday marked the first day of testimony in the trial of Karmelo Anthony, who killed Metcalf, and who still managed to graduate from Centennial High School thanks to the local school district (which should be disbanded immediately).

Based on the trial so far, it’s clear that we still haven’t gotten anything close to the truth about this case. Once again, as we’ve seen so many times, the official narrative, which we all took for granted over the past year, is falling apart. Now that witnesses are testifying and evidence is being introduced, many of these lies are finally being exposed. The judge has banned audio or video recordings from the trial, but because a small number of reporters are in the courtroom, the truth is getting out, in some capacity.

We’ll start with the revelation that, according to prosecutors, Karmelo Anthony lied to investigators during questioning after the killing. Already, we knew that Karmelo Anthony asked police officers whether he could possibly have a valid self-defense claim. We’ve also known that he threw the knife into the stands as a way of hiding the murder weapon. We know he told a police officer, “It’s not alleged, I did it,” when the officer mentioned the stabbing.

So, at the risk of understatement, Karmelo Anthony’s behavior, for a long time, has strongly suggested that he was aware he allegedly committed murder. But at least his responses, as incriminating as they were, seemed relatively truthful, as far as we knew. Now we learn that, in fact, some of his responses weren’t honest at all.

This is a quote from NBC in Dallas, which had a reporter in the courtroom:

Prosecutor Bill Wirskye continued his opening statement, saying that Karmelo Anthony lied to investigators when he said he told Austin Metcalf not to touch him. “He knows what he did. He knows he provoked the murder,” Wirskye said. “And that lie tells you all you need to know about his mindset that day. You simply cannot provoke someone, and when they push you, take their life,” Wirskye said.

Later on, the same prosecutor stated that, according to witnesses, Karmelo Anthony did say to Austin Metcalf, “Touch me and see what happens.” In other words, Anthony went into the tent that was reserved for Austin Metcalf’s team. And then, when Austin Metcalf told Anthony to leave, Anthony responded by daring Metcalf to physically move him from the tent, along with a thinly veiled threat. Anthony also reached into his bag, as if he were going to produce a weapon, which Metcalf (and all the witnesses in the tent) thought was a bluff.

That’s evidently very different from the version of events that Anthony presented to investigators, in which Anthony was just minding his own business, telling Metcalf not to touch him, and then Metcalf grabbed him for no reason. In reality, Anthony was belligerent. He was looking for an opportunity to use the illegal flip knife he was carrying, which he knew was a prohibited item. Rather than simply leaving the tent, he began reaching into his bag for the knife. And before long, he dared Austin Metcalf to make physical contact, presumably so that he could have a pretext to murder him.

We also learned during Thursday’s opening statements that, after Anthony stabbed Metcalf, coaches working for Metcalf’s school had to chase Anthony down and detain him. The prosecutor stated that Anthony tried to exit the stadium after disposing of the knife. But as Anthony fled, Austin Metcalf’s twin brother Hunter lifted Austin’s shirt and saw a “gaping hole in his chest.”

At that point, bystanders pointed out Anthony as he was running away, and some of the coaches ran after him. This was when a student named Hudson Dean told an athletic trainer that he saw Karmelo Anthony throwing a knife into the stands.

Meanwhile, a coach named Joshua Rebmann, who stayed with Metcalf, recognized immediately that he was going to die. Rebmann had military training and said Metcalf was making very labored breaths, indicating that his brain was running out of oxygen. Metcalf lost his pulse before the ambulance arrived on scene.

According to NBC, Anthony fled the scene and tried to exit through the front gate. He attempted to blend in with the crowd, which was rushing out of the tent. But he didn’t get far, because “several coaches stopped him before he made it to the exit.”

In particular, Coach Robert Starr, who worked as head track coach at Metcalf’s school, testified that he “hopped over a gate and approached Anthony and stopped him.” So, Karmelo Anthony was trying to leave the scene. There’s no question about it.

There’s another major element of this trial that, until now, has been minimized and downplayed by the media. It’s the surveillance video showing parts of the altercation from a distance. This is footage that hasn’t been released to the public. The authorities are hiding it, just like the British government is hiding several of the videos involving the murder of Henry Nowak. But as we’ve discussed, a small number of news outlets have been allowed to see the video and describe it to their audience. In every case, the outlets have said it’s useless. They’ve told us for an entire year that there’s nothing interesting about the footage.

But if that’s the case, it’s very odd that the prosecution made the video a centerpiece of their opening argument, as well as the first testimony that the jury heard. Jurors watched two versions of the footage, the raw video and a version that was enhanced. And then, prosecutors questioned a video forensic expert (who works with the DA’s office) about the footage. The entire tape lasted for 15 minutes and 20 seconds, and it begins with the Metcalf brothers entering the stadium.

At the 3-minute, 24-second mark, Anthony enters the stadium. At 7 minutes, 57 seconds into the video, the forensic expert says that “people started paying attention to what was happening under the tent.” One person appears to push another person underneath the tent. The physical confrontation lasts just a couple of seconds. Then there’s a flurry of movement. As described by an NBC reporter in the courtroom, Anthony “exits the bleachers at the top of the tent, goes onto the walkway, down a ramp and into the parking lot, and appears to alternate between running and walking throughout.” As Anthony exits the bleachers, someone is pointing at him. At 12 minutes, 30 seconds, Anthony is being escorted out by police.

From these descriptions, which were provided by reporters who could barely see it, since the TV wasn’t angled towards them, we can conclude that, indeed, the video footage is highly relevant evidence. It’s not worthless, as every media outlet claimed.

Instead, to the contrary, the footage is strong evidence of Anthony’s guilt. If Anthony had truly acted in self-defense and neutralized a dangerous threat, there would be no reason for everyone to run out of the tent in a panic and to point towards Anthony so that the coaches and the police would apprehend him.

When Daniel Penny neutralized the violent homeless schizophrenic on the train, people didn’t run out of the subway car and tell the police to arrest him. Instead, they helped Penny restrain the vagrant. And they were relieved when he took care of business.

So the fact that this footage shows the opposite reaction from bystanders, the fact it shows how horrified they were by what Karmelo Anthony did, strongly suggests that he committed murder. And the other students were worried that he’d kill them next, like a mass shooter. Also, it’s obviously noteworthy that Karmelo Anthony was briefly “running” as part of his escape. Who was he running from, exactly? It really makes you think.

It’s also important to point out that one of Austin Metcalf’s classmates, who is black, ran after Karmelo Anthony. This is reporting from The Daily Mail, which was also in the courtroom:

New state witness Vincent Cooper, a coach at Frisco ISD, is now testifying how he was assigned to manage Karmelo Anthony after the stabbing and stop him from leaving the football stadium. Later, Cooper was asked to calm down a teammate of Austin Metcalf (pictured below) who was angry about Austin’s stabbing. Austin’s teammate, who is black, wanted to attack Anthony. “He stabbed my brother,” the black Memorial teammate said of Austin Metcalf. The teammate explained that he was on the football team with Austin and he considered him family.

This was an immediate reaction from Metcalf’s black teammate. His testimony is completely fatal to the Left’s entire narrative about this case. If he thought Austin Metcalf was attacking Karmelo Anthony because he’s black or whatever, then the odds are pretty good that this particular individual wouldn’t lunge after Anthony and try to avenge his fallen teammate. But that’s what he did because, in the moment, he recognized exactly what Karmelo Anthony had done.

Although it’s not clear who did the pushing in the video, it’s certainly possible that it was Austin Metcalf. Witnesses said that Metcalf, as part of his effort to get Karmelo Anthony out of the tent, applied some physical force. But obviously, when you’re unarmed and you push someone (without even knocking them over), you’re not using lethal force. The person you push isn’t allowed to murder you, because he can’t possibly have a reasonable fear for his life under those circumstances. If the attacker is in the wrong team’s tent, where he’s not supposed to be, and he’s daring someone to push him, and he knows he has a knife, and his victim doesn’t, then there’s no viable self-defense claim. Period.

Along those lines, one of the most important parts of Thursday’s testimony zeroed in on the fact that Anthony was in the wrong tent. Robert Starr, the head track coach, testified that “A tent marks your spot.” He said that it’s a “big deal” to ensure that other people are kept out of the tent, for a variety of reasons, including keeping property safe from theft. He said it’s widely understood at these track meets that you’re not supposed to go into another team’s tent. Additionally, on the day of the stabbing, Coach Starr had texted Metcalf, telling him and his brother that they needed to be “leaders” for the day and to step up, and essentially run the tent. They needed to “assist with getting tents off buses and carrying heavy equipment.” Metcalf responded, “for sure coach gotchu.” And after Metcalf’s death, Coach Starr testified that he replied to that message, “I love you man. Sorry I didn’t say enough.”

The point is, by the broadly accepted standards of the track world, Karmelo Anthony was trespassing. On cross-examination, Karmelo’s defense attorneys tried to make the argument that, occasionally, students will go into the other team’s tent to chat briefly, especially if they see someone they know personally. And Coach Starr agreed that, in certain situations, this does happen. In this case, Karmelo’s defense attorneys say he saw someone named “Edwin Parra” in the Memorial High School tent (Memorial is Austin Metcalf’s school). And Parra is supposedly a “close family friend of Anthony’s girlfriend.” Karmelo Anthony, the lawyers say, had reason to remain in the tent with this acquaintance because it had begun raining. Evidently, Karmelo Anthony’s high school (Centennial) didn’t have its own tent. They only had a tarp.

Contrast Anthony’s behavior with, say, Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny, George Zimmerman, Rick Chow, or anyone else who engaged in lawful self-defense and who the Left tried to send to prison for the rest of their lives. None of these people attempted to flee after they eliminated the threat.

Kyle Rittenhouse walked towards the police blockade in Kenosha. Daniel Penny remained on the subway platform. George Zimmerman didn’t move an inch from the pavement where Trayvon Martin tried to smash his head into a pulp. Rick Chow stayed at his gas station and voluntarily provided a comprehensive statement to police the moment they arrived.

Not that it really needs to be spelled out, but in general, innocent people don’t flee the scene after they defend themselves. They don’t try to hide the murder weapon. They don’t lie to investigators about what they were doing.