Nicolae Miu trial recap: victims, law enforcement, friends testify during first week

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
Updated ·9 min read
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Nicolae Miu’s murder trial began last Monday with key evidence: a gruesome cellphone video showing much of the July 2022 confrontation on the Apple River that left a Stillwater teen fatally stabbed and four other tubers with serious injuries.

The week’s testimony ended last Friday with Miu’s friends who’d been tubing with him that day on the western Wisconsin river. One said Miu looked pale and seemed worried and scared after the deadly confrontation.

The trial, which is expected to last through Friday, resumes Monday morning in St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson.

Miu, 54, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the death of 17-year-old 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, who were both in their early 20s and from Luck, Wis.

In the prosecution’s opening statement, District Attorney Karl Anderson said the confrontation turned violent after Miu punched a woman.

“Senseless and horrific acts of violence, when all Nicolae had to do was walk away,” he said.

Miu said in his interview with an investigator that he acted in self-defense after being attacked by a large group of angry and intoxicated tubers who accused him of being a “pedophile” while he was looking for his friend’s lost cellphone and carrying a snorkel and goggles.

Miu’s attorney Aaron Nelson said in his opening statement that Miu was standing in the river with “13 drunk, angry strangers,” some of whom were screaming and accusing him of “looking for little girls.”

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

“He was outnumbered,” Nelson 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 jurors the cellphone 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. “Beliefs, not actions.”

If the jury is convinced that Miu, a mechanical engineer from Prior Lake, acted reasonably after being threatened with death or bodily harm, he could be acquitted. If not, he could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

So far, prosecutors have called more than 30 of its 45 witnesses. They expect to rest their case Monday or Tuesday.

The trial will then shift to the defense, which plans to call up to 16 witnesses. It’s unclear whether Miu will testify. He’s been jailed in lieu of a $2 million bond since the stabbings.

The jury is comprised of eight men and six women, with two alternates. Two jurors are in their 20s, one in their 30s, three in their 40s, three in their 50s, one in their 60s, three in their 70s and one in their 90s.

Day one

The nearly 3½-minute cellphone video, taken by Schuman’s friend Jawahn Cockfield, shows the confrontation between Miu and two groups of tubers leading up to and during Schuman’s killing in Somerset on July 30, 2022.

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.

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 says. “Get away from us!” yells another. “You got 10 seconds!” says another.

Two women from the group, Mattison and Madison Coen, approach Miu and tell him to go away. One of the young men yells: “He’s looking for little girls!” Miu doesn’t say anything.

As a crowd gathers around Miu, he is knocked into the water and slapped in the face. More laughter breaks out. 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.

Shock and grief ensues.

“Is this real?” Cockfield shouts. “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!”

One of the first witnesses called to the stand was 18-year-old Ryan Nelson, one of Schuman’s best friends. He said his group asked Miu to leave multiple times. He said Miu was knocked into the river after striking “the blonde woman” with his right hand.

Day two

Schuman’s mother, Alina Hernandez, told the courtroom in emotional testimony that her son would have been a senior at Stillwater Area High School and was looking forward to going to college for engineering.

Schuman golfed nearly every day and enjoyed boating and fishing. He had just bought a trailer for his business detailing boats and cars. He loved his family, friends and girlfriend, his mother said.

After getting a frantic call from his friend and reaching the scene, she ran up to one of the ambulances, thinking it was Isaac “sitting up in there. I started crawling into the ambulance and I realized it wasn’t Isaac, it was one of the other kids.”

When she climbed out, she noticed Isaac by his hair, his body lying on the riverbank. “I knew it was him,” she said. “And they were trying to perform CPR on him.”

Miu stabbed Schuman in the chest with great force, cutting through two ribs and slicing his heart, prosecutors said Monday. He died almost immediately.

Deputy District Attorney Brian Smestad asked Cockfield why he began recording on his phone. He said Miu was looking “suspicious” and “said a weird comment, something about, like, some little girls.”

Cockfield said Miu punched a “blonde lady” who was telling him to get away, causing her group of friends to go toward him to “try to, I guess, fight him.” The alleged assault is not on the video.

In cross-examination, Miu’s attorney Corey Chirafisi asked Cockfield if he believed telling Miu that he “can’t have sex with little girls and calling him a raper would be considered antagonizing.”

“Yes,” he said.

Day three

Jurors heard from people who’d been injured and other witnesses and other tubers, including Miu’s own group.

Martin, who survived with the most serious injuries, showed jurors a long scar from below his belt line to above his ribs. He underwent surgery and said he was hospitalized for 27 days, during which he lost 50 pounds.

Mattison said she and her friends were tubing but stopped because she heard mention “about a group looking uncomfortable,” referring to Schuman and his group.

Mattison said she and Coen walked up to a man they now know as Miu. She testified she remembered Miu punched Coen in the face without saying anything. She thought Miu also punched her, but she’d been stabbed.

Nelson asked Martin about him saying he was trying to mediate the situation on the river.

“You can understand how a person in Mr. Miu’s position who’d been hit twice in the water might not understand or appreciate your intent to try to de-escalate by pushing him?” Nelson asked.

“It could have been solved if he tried to use words at all, too,” Martin said.

Meanwhile, Sondra Miu, who married Miu in 2011 and divorced him last month, told jurors he is “a very peaceful person.”

Day four

Prosecution shifted from witness accounts of the violent encounter to the response, including law enforcement’s arrival at the scene and Miu’s arrest at Village Park about a mile downstream an hour later.

Andrea Baldazo, a registered nurse from Forest Lake, was tubing with her family when she saw Schuman and then tried to save him from dying.

Schuman’s eyes were open, but not blinking. He was not breathing.

“I started chest compressions right away and continued that for a long time,” Baldazo said, recalling that she and others took turns giving CPR, singing the children’s song “Baby Shark” to keep a steady rhythm.

Deputy Benjamin Trebian’s body-cam video gave jurors a look at Miu’s arrest. A deputy is seen placing handcuffs on Miu, who is wearing sunglasses, a baseball cap, swim trunks and a long-sleeve camouflage shirt.

Trebian noted markings on Miu’s hands, and testified that he took photos for potential evidence.

In cross-examination, Nelson asked Trebian if the marks on Miu’s hands could have been from falling into a river and hitting rocks or the river bottom. “Potentially,” the deputy said.

Sheriff’s office investigator Mitchell Schaeppi testified they found the murder weapon — a folding pocketknife with a black handle, silver blade and clip — in a muddy section of a shoreline. He then opened a cardboard box with the knife, showing it to the courtroom, blade exposed.

In his interview with an investigator the night of the stabbings, Miu said he didn’t bring a knife to the river. However, Sondra Miu told another investigator that he had one with him.

Day five

Judge Waterman allowed Miu’s best friend Ernesto Torres-Chaguez to testify out of order for the defense — before the state is done calling its witnesses — because he needed a Spanish interpreter and one was in the courtroom.

Torres-Chaguez said he asked Miu to bring his folding pocketknife on the tubing trip to cut the cords tying tubes together.

Alba Torres testified that Miu seemed “normal” and was quiet upon returning to her group after the stabbings. She said they did not know that Miu had stabbed anyone, that he told them he’d been pushed by a group of tubers.

It came out during questioning the lost phone Miu was looking for was found by police.

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