Nicolae Miu testifies he feared for his life when he stabbed Isaac Schuman, admits lying about knife

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
Updated ·9 min read
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Nicolae Miu told jurors Tuesday that he lied to an investigator when he said he took a knife away from one of the tubers who’d been yelling, pushing and hitting him during a confrontation on western Wisconsin’s Apple River that led to the death of a 17-year-old Stillwater teen and serious injuries to four others.

Miu testified that he felt threatened when he pulled his own knife while two women were facing him because he was being “attacked” and “feared for my life.”

The 54-year-old took the stand for the first time in his murder trial in St. Croix County Circuit Court, saying that his “fear scale” kept growing during the confrontation with two groups of tubers in Somerset on July 30, 2022.

Miu, of Prior Lake, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the death of Isaac Schuman and attempted first-degree intentional homicide for wounding Ryhley Mattison, then 24, of Burnsville; A.J. Martin, then 22, of Elk River; and brothers Dante Carlson and Tony Carlson, both in their early 20s, of Luck, Wis.

Both sides rested their cases Tuesday, the seventh day of the trial in Hudson. Judge R. Michael Waterman directed jurors to return to the courthouse at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday for jury instructions and then closing arguments. The jury will then decide Miu’s fate.

Miu testified he was carrying a snorkel and mask while looking for his friend’s lost phone that was in a float case and “stumbled” onto the innertubes belonging to Schuman’s group. He said he grabbed onto their innertubes, which were tied together. He said he couldn’t leave the confrontation because he didn’t feel safe turning his back to them.

In its cross-examination, the prosecution tried to paint a picture of Miu as someone looking for a confrontation. They showed clips of a cellphone video with Miu touching his knife that was clipped inside his pocket and later fidgeting with it before the stabbings. They tried to show Miu had the opportunity and space to walk away.

Miu’s attorney Aaron Nelson used still photos from a cellphone video taken by Schuman’s friend Jawahn Cockfield in his direct examination.

Nelson asked Miu how he felt when he was pushed into the water. “I was stunned,” he said. “I was very afraid, of course.”

When asked, Miu said he was at level 10 on the fear scale, a place he’d never been to before.

When he got up, he was punched in the head, Miu said. He fell back down, and someone pushed his back as he tried to get back on his feet.

“Why’d you use your knife?” Nelson asked.

“I feared for my life,” he said.

Under questioning by Deputy District Attorney Brian Smestad, Miu agreed that he grabbed his knife while two women were standing before him. He opened the blade and held it by his side, before he was “punched” by Dante Carlson, Smestad said.

Miu, who emigrated to Minnesota from Romania as a young teen, has been jailed in lieu of a $2 million bond since the stabbings. If convicted of the intentional murder charge, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Medical examiner testifies

Victor Froloff, an assistant medical examiner for the Ramsey County medical examiner’s office, testified the autopsy showed Schuman suffered a 4-inch stab wound that cut through two ribs, a lung and his heart.

In the final report, Froloff said Schuman died of exsanguination, or bleeding to death as a result of a stab wound to the left chest, and the manner of death was homicide.

A toxicology test showed Schuman’s blood-alcohol content was 0.219 and no other substances or drugs were found in his system, Froloff said.

Under cross-examination, Nelson noted Schuman’s BAC was more than 2½ times the legal limit to drive.

Nelson asked Froloff questions about how the wound became that deep.

WEEK ONE RECAP: Victims, friends, law enforcement testified

“If a body is moving toward that knife, that’s going to impact the depth of the wound, agreed?” Nelson asked.

“Yes,” Froloff said.

“And if a 6-foot, 134 (pound) person is moving toward (sic) into that knife, that might make the knife go deeper, correct?” Nelson asked.

“That’s, again, I can’t predict how deep exactly, but it’s a possibility,” Froloff said.

First interview replayed

Earlier in the day, jurors heard Miu’s interview with Lt. Brandie Hart of the St. Croix County sheriff’s office, a formal statement in which he said he took a knife from one of the tubers who were attacking him on the river.

At the time, he said he did not have a knife with him, but Miu’s own attorney acknowledged in his opening statement last week that Miu lied about that.

Miu told Hart in the first few minutes of the nearly hour-long interview that he acted in self-defense. He said the confrontation started when the other tubers called him a child molester. He said they hit him in the back and a girl slapped him in the right ear.

“I feared for my life,” he told Hart. “I was very shocked.”

DAY 6: Defense says Miu was being taunted before stabbing

In the interview, he said he grabbed a tuber’s knife and “twisted it” and jabbed and swung.

At one point, Miu told Hart he wasn’t in the best of health because he had a heart attack in 2020 and quadruple bypass surgery.

Later, Miu asked Hart what happened to the others. She told him one had died and four others sustained injuries.

“Oh no,” Miu said, then asked if they were fighting with each other. Hart said she did not know.

Miu then put his head in his hands and said, “Oh my god.”

“Now my whole life is down the tubes,” he said.

“I don’t know, people have a right to defend themselves,” Hart told him.

Miu said he was “sorry for how it ended up.”

During cross-examination, Miu’s attorney Corey Chirafisi acknowledged what Miu told Hart about how he obtained the knife was “incorrect.”

“Would you agree, based on your interview with Mr. Miu, he never wavered in his claim it was self-defense, correct?” Chirafisi asked Hart.

“Correct,” she said.

“He never wavered in his claim that he was fearful, correct?” Chirafisi asked.

“Correct,” she said.

Miu did not show signs of intoxication, Hart said.

Knife in his hand

Throughout the trial, several witnesses testified the confrontation became heated after Miu mentioned something about “little girls.” It turned violent after he either punched or slapped Madison Coen in the face, they said.

In direct examination, Miu’s defense attorneys got right into his interaction with Coen, who yelled at him to get away. The cellphone video shows Coen and her friend in Miu’s face right before the stabbings.

Miu testified Coen grabbed his right arm and pulled him toward her, causing him to lose his balance, so “I moved towards her.” He said he told Coen not to touch him.

He said he turned toward his group, trying to call them to “come over and help me.”

In the nearly 3½-minute video, Miu says nothing. “I didn’t think having another raised voice would have helped the situation,” he said.

Nelson showed video stills of Miu with his right hand on the knife, which was in his pocket, and then in his hand.

“And what was it about that moment where everybody made you so fearful that you took out your knife?” Nelson asked.

“I was surrounded,” Miu said. “They were yelling. They had just pushed me. Well, the lady, she squeezed my arm. I mean, it seemed like they were not backing away.”

Miu admitted after questioning by the prosecution that after Schuman’s group told him to go away, he stood briefly in their path.

Prosecutor Smestad said that Miu then walked toward Coen, had his knife out by his side and was “prepared to use it.”

“To defend myself,” Miu replied.

“At that point, there’s nothing to defend yourself from, right?” Smestad asked.

“I didn’t know that,” Miu said.

The prosecution played the part of the video that showed the moment when Miu jabbed the knife into Martin’s stomach. Miu said he did it “about the same time he hit me in the throat.”

Smestad stopped the video clip when it showed the knife near Martin’s chin, saying “when you stabbed him, instead of pulling it out, you went up, right?”

“I was falling backwards with the knife in my hand and the angle of my arm was about the same,” Miu said.

After stabbing Tony Carlson, Smestad said, Miu turned around and “sliced” Madison through the left side of her body. “She came at me,” Miu claimed.

After Schuman tried to push him, Smestad said, “you jam your knife up into his heart through his rib cage.”

“Right after he touches my throat and pushes me, yes, correct,” Miu said.

Smestad called out Miu on what he described as his “lie on top of lie” to Hart. He said Miu lied when he told Hart that Schuman’s group tried to pull down his swim trunks and that he took a knife from one of them.

“I totally lied about the knife,” Miu responded. “I didn’t remember a lot of details.”

Smestad also focused his questions to Miu about his actions after the stabbings. Miu agreed that instead of walking to his group after the stabbings, he went to the opposite side of the river and washed his hands and the knife, which he then threw on a riverbank. Smestad noted how Miu didn’t say anything as he walked past several law enforcement officers at Village Park, where he soon was arrested.

In re-direct examination, Nelson asked Miu what he meant when he said on the stand that he didn’t have a memory of some of the details, but had a memory of the feelings.

“So, feelings are brought on by … what’s happening, at least with me,” Miu said. “If you get hit in the head, that’s a feeling of hurt. If you fall back and you hit your head and you fall back on river rock and you get hurt, you feel pain. When you know you can’t get away and you feel like you’re drowning and there are people on top of you, pounding you and holding you in the water, that’s a timestamp in the filing cabinet that says, this is what I suffered. It’s something I would love to erase from my memory, but unfortunately there are lots of those feelings, very strong feelings I can’t erase.”

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