Apple River stabbing trial begins, with two starkly different views of the fatal confrontation

Mary Divine, Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
Updated ·10 min read

A gruesome video, played Monday on the first day of the Nicolae Miu murder trial in St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson, Wis., starts with a group of six young men laughing as Miu runs toward them in the Apple River during a day of tubing.

It ends with the boys crying and wailing hysterically as the water surrounding them turns red from the blood of their friend Isaac Schuman.

“Is this real?” shouts Jawahn Cockfield, who shot the video on his iPhone. “Oh my God! That’s not blood. That’s not blood! That’s not blood! That’s not Isaac! Oh my God! This isn’t real!”

Miu, 54, of Prior Lake, is on trial for the killing of Schuman, 17, of Stillwater and the wounding of three men and a woman during the chaotic confrontation on July 30, 2022.

The video

The nearly 3½ minute video shows a confrontation between Miu and two different groups of tubers on the river leading up to and during Schuman’s fatal stabbing.

In the video, Miu, dressed in swim trunks and carrying a snorkel and a mask, runs toward Schuman and five friends whose inner tubes are tied up together. Miu told investigators he was looking for a friend’s missing cell phone — encased in a waterproof floating bag — that had been dropped in the river.

“What is he on?” one of the young men can be heard saying in the video as Miu runs toward the tubers.

When Miu loses his snorkel and mask in the water, he goes around Schuman and his friends and appears to be searching and feeling around in the shallow water. The young men can be heard laughing. “He just lost his snorkel!” one of the young men says. “Get away from us!” yells another. “You got 10 seconds!” says another.

When two women from another group of tubers approach Miu and the young men, one of the young men yells: “He’s looking for little girls!”

Miu can be seen arguing with one of the women, Madison Coen, who points down the river and yells at him to walk away.

As a crowd gathers around Miu, he is knocked into the water and slapped in the face. Some of the tubers can be heard laughing at him. When he gets up, he is holding a knife and stabs a man wearing yellow swim trunks. Miu is then pushed back into the water.

A girl wearing a bikini can be seen with a cut on the side of her body and blood dripping down. “He hit a woman?” one of the men can be heard yelling.

The man in the yellow swim trunks can be seen lying in the shallow water, clutching his bloody stomach.

Miu is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in Schuman’s death and attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the stabbings of Rhyley Mattison, then 24, of Burnsville, A.J. Martin, then 22, of Elk River, and Dante Carlson and Anthony Carlson, who were both in their early 20s and from Luck, Wis. A misdemeanor battery charge was added after the original criminal complaint in connection with Miu allegedly punching Coen before the stabbings.

Miu pleaded not guilty to all charges in September 2022. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

The trial began with jury selection on Monday. Eight men and six women were chosen, with two of them as alternates.

Opening statements

In his opening statement, St. Croix County District Attorney Karl Anderson called the stabbings and fatal attack “senseless and horrific acts of violence.”

“All Nicolae had to do was walk away,” Anderson said. “He eventually did walk away, but not until after stabbing five people.”

Anderson showed several still images from Cockfield’s video, and told the jury that they would see the “sequence of events” during the trial. “You can hear people yelling at Nicolae over 20 times some version of ‘Get away! Go away! Get away from us! Get the f— away! Get back! Get away from us! Walk away!’”

The confrontation took place around 3:45 p.m., some 100 to 200 yards upstream from the Highway 35/64 bridge in Somerset.

“It was a nice day … weather was in the 80s,” Anderson said. “Perfect sunny day for tubing.”

Sheriff’s deputies found Schuman without vital signs, and with a puncture wound in the upper abdomen near his left breast. The Stillwater Area High School teen was pronounced dead at Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater.

Members of Schuman’s family wept as Anderson talked about Schuman, known to his friends as “Bike.”

“It was the summer before Isaac’s senior year of high school,” Anderson said. “He was living in Stillwater, Minnesota, with his mom, stepdad, brother and stepsister. He was looking forward to going to college after high school.”

Three photos of Schuman flashed on the screen as Anderson talked about the young man. One was his last school photo from his junior year in high school, another was from his 17th birthday celebration at a restaurant with his family, and the last was of him showing off to his mom “the new trailer he bought for his new car-detailing business,” Anderson said.

RELATED: Was the Apple River stabbing murder or self defense? Trial begins Monday.

Miu, wearing an olive-colored suit with a red-striped tie, sat mostly motionless during Anderson’s nearly 40-minute opening statement.

Miu, a mechanical engineer at Ritchie Engineering Co. in Minneapolis, appears to be “smiling” and “smirking” at Schuman and his friends before the physical confrontation, Anderson said.

“You’ll not hear him yell at anyone to get back,” he told the jury. “You’ll not see him say anything at this point in the video after he takes his knife out. You’ll not see him trying to take a step back or walk away. You will see him looking around, smirking, while continuing to hold the knife down by his side.”

Miu runs toward the young men when he first confronts them. “That’s the only time in this video you’ll see Nicolae run,” Anderson said. “He doesn’t even run after stabbing five people. He walks away.”

Anderson said the confrontation turned physical when Miu punched Coen. Another member of her tubing group, Dante Carlson, then punched Miu, causing him to fall into the shallow water, he said.

Within 25 seconds, Miu stabbed A.J. Martin, Ryhley Mattison, Dante Carlson and Tony Carlson, he said. Miu also fatally stabbed Schuman, who suffered wounds to his torso, chest and heart.

No one besides Miu had a weapon, Anderson said.

Anderson told jurors they will hear testimony from the four stabbing victims during the trial, which is expected to last 10 days before Judge R. Michael Waterman.

Miu’s attorney, Aaron Nelson, said in his opening statement that Miu was standing in the river with “13 strangers, 13 drunk angry strangers.”

“Thirteen against one,” Nelson said. “They yelled and they screamed in order to attract a crowd. They got a crowd, they told lies to make the crowd angry. ‘He’s looking for little girls! He’s looking for little girls!”’

Nelson said they called him a “pedophile” and a “predator.”

When Miu was pushed in the water, Miu “feared for his life,” Nelson said.

“He was outnumbered,” he said. “He was acting in self-defense. He believed he needed to use (his knife). The truth is, he used it because he was surrounded by that angry mob and he was afraid. They gave him every reason.”

Nelson told the jury the video is not from Miu’s perspective.

“Why is that important? Because the judge is going to tell you it’s important, because at the end of the case, you’ll need to determine the reasonableness of his beliefs from his point of view,” Nelson said. “You’ll need to determine the reasonableness of his beliefs. Beliefs, not actions.”

Miu, who grew up in Romania, immigrated with his family to the United States when he was 15 or 16, Nelson said. He speaks Romanian, Russian, French, Latin and English, he said.

“Romania was not a good place to be in the ’80s,” Nelson said. “They had a Communist dictator, and all kinds of other bad stuff was going on. Nic’s dad, like a lot of people in the world, wanted to have a better place for his family to grow up, so they became political refugees and were accepted by a church in Minnesota, and they came over to Minnesota.”

Miu had a heart attack in 2020 and underwent a quadruple-bypass open-heart surgery, Nelson told the jury. “Nic, like a lot of people, maybe as they get older, isn’t in the best health,” Nelson said. “(Recovery) took some time, and he’ll tell you how that still makes him feel fragile.”

He also told jurors that they will hear how Schuman’s group had been drinking and “smoking stuff.”

“The one piece of evidence that we know for sure is that at the time of the autopsy, Isaac Schuman’s blood alcohol concentration was 0.219,” Nelson said. “And if you ask his friends, his friends are going to say he was the most sober one in the group.”

A folding pocketknife with a black handle and silver blade was found in a closed position along the west bank of the river near where the incident took place.

Nelson said “they pulled on him. They closed the space around him. They got up in his face.”

“Somebody else pushed him, and they pointed and they pushed and they pushed and they pushed,” Nelson said. “And when he put up his left hand, when he put up his left hand to block and protect himself, as they’re in his space, in his face, he puts up his left hand to defend himself.”

Miu’s defense team includes Corey Chirafisi, who was co-counsel for Kyle Rittenhouse. Chirafisi helped win not-guilty verdicts for Rittenhouse in 2021 after the then-teenager testified that he fatally shot two men and injured another in self-defense during the civil unrest that followed a police shooting in Kenosha in 2020.

Miu has remained jailed in lieu of a $1 million cash bond since his arrest about a mile downstream from the stabbing site some 90 minutes later.

First witnesses

One of the first witnesses called to the stand was Ryan Nelson, 18, one of Schuman’s best friends. Nelson said the group of six had texted the night before and agreed to meet at Stillwater Area High School to drive over to River’s Edge in Somerset to rent tubes.

Nelson said his group asked Miu to leave multiple times. He said Miu was knocked into the river after striking “the blond woman.”

“When you say he punched the lady, was it possible he was flailing his arms?” Deputy District Attorney Brian Smestad asked him.

“No, it looked like he struck her definitively with his right hand,” Nelson answered.

When Miu got up after having been pushed down, he was “swinging his knife and stabbing everyone,” Nelson said.

“At what point did you know that he had a knife in his hand?” Smestad asked.

“Once I saw the person standing next to me who had his whole stomach cut open,” he said.

When asked what he did next, Nelson said he was “in shock.”

“I didn’t really know what to do,” he said. “I tried to tell my friends because I wanted to make sure they were seeing what I was seeing.”

The trial will resume on Tuesday.

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