‘Justice for Isaac,’ teen’s parents say after Nicolae Miu found guilty in Apple River homicide

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
Updated ·8 min read
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Gasps could be heard in the courtroom Thursday as a St. Croix County jury announced it had found Nicolae Miu guilty of first-degree reckless homicide and other charges for fatally stabbing 17-year-old Isaac Schuman of Stillwater two years ago during a confrontation with a group of tubers on western Wisconsin’s Apple River.

The verdict was reached after about six hours of deliberations over two days and read by Judge R. Michael Waterman just after 11 a.m.

After jurors left the courtroom, Miu’s attorney Aaron Nelson put his arm around the 54-year-old, who shook his head. Waterman revoked the $2 million bond that’s kept Miu jailed since the stabbings.

Miu, who argued he acted in self-defense, could face 97 years in prison if he’s sentenced consecutively, said District Attorney Karl Anderson. A sentencing date hasn’t been set.

Jurors could not agree on the most serious charges against Miu: first-degree intentional homicide, which carried a potential life sentence, and four counts of attempted intentional first-degree homicide.

When they didn’t find him guilty of those counts, they moved to the lesser charges that prosecutors added late Tuesday.

‘Justice for Isaac’

Shortly after noon, Schuman’s parents Alina and Donny Hernandez left the Hudson courthouse with a large group of family members and friends and gave a brief statement.

“It’s been 21 months we’ve been waiting for justice for Isaac Michael Schuman, and we got it today,” Donny Hernandez said, fighting back tears. “So I just want to tell everybody, I appreciate all your love and support.”

“Justice for Isaac, and the other victims,” Schuman’s mother said.

“Yes, justice for Isaac,” his father said.

The trial began April 1 and drew high interest from across the U.S., in part because it was live-streamed by media outlets and the stabbings happened at a popular recreation area.

“We want to thank all our supporters,” Schuman’s father said. “Our family. Law enforcement. People that have supported us, that we don’t even know throughout the country, state of Minnesota, wherever.”

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Miu’s conviction of first-degree reckless homicide with a dangerous weapon carries up to 45 years in prison.

Jurors also found Miu, a former mechanical engineer from Prior Lake who emigrated from Romania as a teen, guilty of four counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety with a dangerous weapon, which carries a maximum 12½-year sentence on each count, and one count of misdemeanor battery while using a dangerous weapon.

Two jurors were in their 20s, one in their 30s, two in their 40s, three in their 50s, three in their 70s and one in their 90s.

Self-defense claim

Miu testified Tuesday that his “fear scale” kept growing during a confrontation June 30, 2022, with other Apple River tubers about 100 to 200 yards upstream from the Wisconsin 35/64 bridge in Somerset, a community famous for its river tubing, camping and partying.

Miu told investigators that he was using a snorkel and goggles to look for a friend’s lost cellphone contained in a waterproof floating bag. On a cellphone video, Schuman’s group can be heard yelling at Miu to go away and accusing him — inaccurately as it turned out — of “looking for little girls.”

He said he feared for his life when he stabbed Schuman in the chest and seriously injured 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. Schuman bled to death.

To try to make their case, prosecutors and defense attorneys relied heavily on a cellphone video taken by Schuman’s friend Jawahn Cockfield. One is 9 seconds long, shortly after Miu ran up to the five teens while he was looking for his friend’s lost phone, the other a 3½-minute recording that shows much of the confrontation and its frantic aftermath.

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Prosecutors tried to get across to jurors that Miu had opportunities to walk away despite taunts from the teens and that it turned violent after he became angry and punched Madison Coen, who was part of the Carlson brothers’ group. Dante Carlson then punched Miu, causing him to fall into the shallow water, where he was pushed several times.

Within 25 seconds, Miu stabbed Martin, Mattison and Tony Carlson — all of them once in the torso — and Dante Carlson twice, also in the torso. Miu stabbed Schuman in the chest with great force, cutting through two ribs and slicing his heart.

“Absolutely senseless and horrific acts of violence and all Nicolae you had to do was walk away,” Anderson said in the state’s closing argument Wednesday. “All he had to do was walk away. That’s what you’ve seen in this case.”

In addition to Nelson, who specializes in violent crimes, Miu is represented by Corey Chirafisi, who was co-counsel for Kyle Rittenhouse in 2021. 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.

The defense team tried to portray a scene in which Miu was surrounded by a drunken, angry mob who called him a “pedophile,” among other names, and attacked him. In the video, Chirafisi said in the defense’s closing argument, someone in the group is heard telling Miu, “‘You got 10 seconds.’ It’s reasonable in our experiences as adults to take that as a threat, right?”

The video showed Miu being “knocked clean off his feet backwards into the water” by a punch to the jaw thrown by Dante Carlson, Chirafisi said. And it shows that Carlson then “cracks him across the face” and Martin shoves him from behind — and Carlson “goes in for thirds and smacks Nic Miu in the face again.”

“At this point, after he’s been punched, slapped, pushed, slapped, he hasn’t stabbed anyone,” Chirafisi said.

Attorneys’ reactions

Nelson said outside the courthouse that he was “surprised” and “respectfully disappointed” with the jury’s decision.

“I understand … it’s a huge task that the jury just undertook, and we obviously, disagree,” he said.

When asked about Miu’s thoughts on the verdict, Nelson said, “He’s showed appropriate emotion throughout. He’s had a deep sadness. As he said on the initial tape to the police, he said he was sorry. … And so he continues to feel those feelings. He’s sad, obviously disappointed in the result. And, you know, contemplating his future life.”

Nelson said he thought they put on a good defense. “But in many ways, self-defense is a community standard, and it’s very dependent upon which group of 12 people within the community you ask. I understand and appreciate that,” he said. “We had a lot of complex feelings going in. We felt confident. But we’re also aware that it’s not math. It’s not black and white. It’s a community standard.”

Anderson said outside the courtroom that he’s relieved for Schuman’s family and those of the other victims.

“As anyone can see in this case, it’s absolutely tragic on many levels, but we’re relieved with the jury’s verdict, he said.

He said he wasn’t disappointed the guilty verdicts weren’t for the more serious intentional charges.

“It’s part of the criminal justice process,” he said. “The jury gets to decide which charge fits the facts. So they determined that it was reckless. It doesn’t mean some didn’t think it was intentional. But they couldn’t agree on intentional. They agreed unanimously that it was reckless, that he showed utter disregard for human life.”

The video was important for both sides, but it doesn’t tell the whole story, Anderson said.

“If you just watch the video, you don’t get the full picture of this case,” he said. “The jury sat through seven days of evidence. A key point in this case was Nicolae’s own actions. After he stabbed all these people, he walked away. He ditched his knife, didn’t tell his group anything. And then he tried to get away, he pretended like he wasn’t involved, and then gave a story to Lt. Hart that they pulled knives on him. And I think that’s important for the jury to know that, to see what he thought, what was in his mind at the time of these, and whether it was actually self-defense.”

Anderson said one of the points that he and Assistant District Attorney Brian Smestad wanted to get across to jurors during their cross-examination of Miu was how he held his knife at his side before wielding it. “If he’s truly afraid, why not just hold up the knife? And people are going to back up like Owen (Peloquin) did. Owen ran away once he saw the knife,” Anderson said.

The case had a “major impact” on the community, he said.

“I think a big part of it is how public it was, the incident, the number of victims,” said Anderson, who was elected district attorney in 2020. “It happens that the victims aren’t residents of here, either was Nicolae, but the Apple River is very well known in the area. As anyone who was there for jury selection, I think about half the jury panel had been to the Apple River. So I think it kind of hits close to home for a lot of people.”

Mara H. Gottfried contributed to this report.

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