Trial began April 1 in Apple River stabbing case: underaged teenagers drinking and smoking marijuana
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Nicolae Miu
By LeAnn R. Ralph
HUDSON — On the opening day of a two-week trial for a stabbing incident on the Apple River that left four people injured and one dead, testimony revealed that the group of underaged teenagers had been drinking and smoking marijuana.
Nicolae Miu, age 54, of Prior Lake, Minnesota, is charged with four felony counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, one felony count of first degree intentional homicide, and one misdemeanor count of battery in connection with the incident that happened on the Apple River in July of 2022.
The deceased victim, 17-year-old Isaac Schuman, was from Stillwater, Minnesota.
Karl Anderson, St. Croix County district attorney, said in his opening statement that the victims did not know Miu had a knife and at first had thought they had been punched.
One of the victims was nearly disemboweled, required emergency surgery, and was in the hospital for a month, he said.
One of the victims suffered a sliced diaphragm and also required emergency surgery, and the deceased suffered from a slice to his heart, which cut through two ribs. The victim died almost immediately, Anderson said.
Officers went to a nearby bridge and had to wade into the Apple River to reach the victims, he said.
Miu showed no emotion when he was taken into custody, and when Sheriff Scott Knudson had checked on Miu, the defendant had asked what was going on and that he had heard someone had been stabbed, Anderson said.
Miu’s version differs “drastically” from what can be seen in a video taken that day, and when Miu was interviewed by investigators, he was not told there was a video, he said.
Self defense
Miu told Lieutenant Brandie Hart with the St. Croix County Sheriff’s Department that it had been self defense and also said the others in the group had pulled knives on him, Anderson said.
Miu said the group of teenagers had grabbed at his pants and that they threw his snorkel in the water, he said.
According to the criminal complaint, Miu had told investigators he had a snorkel and goggles and was looking for a friend’s cell phone that had been dropped in the water. Miu also was tubing on the river that day with family and friends.
Miu told investigators he did not have a knife and that the group of teenagers were hitting him. The defendant said that he had taken the knife from “the kids,” Anderson said.
Miu also told investigators he did not know where his knife was and that he’d had it with him to cut strings for the tubes used on the river, he said.
Miu said he did not know why the group of teenagers had attacked him and repeated over and over again that they had attacked him and that he had fallen down, Anderson said.
One of the people in Miu’s group said when Miu was walking back toward them, he had gone over to the river bank and threw something on the bank before coming back to his group, he said.
A knife was located on the river bank that was sent to the state crime lab. The knife tested positive for blood and positive for DNA from the victims, Anderson said.
All Miu had to do was walk away, he said.
Screaming and yelling
Nicolae Miu was in the river with 13 drunk, angry strangers around him, said Aaron Nelson, one of Miu’s attorneys, during his opening statement.
The group of teenagers yelled and screamed to attract a crowd, and they told lies to make the crowd angry, he said.
The group yelled, “He’s looking for little girls. He’s looking for little girls,” and “He’s a predator,” Nelson said.
The group closed the circle around Miu and “got up in his face” and then “pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed.” Miu put up his left land to block them and to protect himself, and the group became violent and punched him and knocked him down and then hit him while he was down in the water, he said.
Miu feared for his life and responded in self defense, Nelson said.
One member of the group who punched Miu was so confident the group was going to beat “this old man down” that he kept his drink in his hand, he said.
Refugee
Nicolae Miu is 54 years old, and he grew up in Romania during the 1980s at a time when Romania had a communist dictator, Nelson said.
Miu and his parents came to the United States as political refugees when Miu was 15 or 16 years old and settled in Minnesota. Miu speaks English as a fifth language, and in addition to Romanian and Russian, which he learned in Romania, he speaks French and Latin. Miu earned a degree as a mechanical engineer, he said.
Miu brought his goggles and snorkel to the Apple River that day because he is a bit of an explorer, Nelson said, noting that there probably was not much to see in the Apple River.
A friend of Miu’s, Ernesto, had invited Miu on the outing. Miu had been down the Apple River one time before, he said.
In 2020, Miu had a heart attack and quadruple by-pass open-heart surgery, and following the surgery, he still feels fragile and is certainly not as fit as he was when he was 18 or 22, Nelson said.
.219
The deceased, Isaac Schuman, had a blood alcohol content at the time of autopsy of .219, and his friends said that he was the most sober person in the group, Nelson said.
The member of the group is holding up the phone to video the group taunting Miu because the person with the phone thinks it is funny. Nicolae Miu sees the phone and wonders, perhaps, if it could be his friend’s lost cell phone, he said.
They could have floated on by and left this man alone, but they do not, Nelson said.
The group of teenagers were big, loud, football players. They were a confident group of six, he said.
The group made a judgement based on what Miu looked like. He was an old man with goggles, and they were trying to humiliate him. And when Miu walked away, they followed him, Nelson said, noting that Miu had been unable to find his snorkel, his goggles or the cell phone he was looking for.
Reasonable belief
The jury must determine the reasonableness of Nicolae Miu’s beliefs from his point of view, Nelson said
The jury must think about what they would feel or believe if they were in a similar situation, he said.
A belief can be reasonable even if it is a mistaken belief, Nelson said.
Miu walks away, and they follow him; A group of drunk teenagers follow him. He sees other adults and hopes to appeal to them for help, he said.
A man who was part of another group on the river said when he heard all the shouting, that he was afraid something would happen to Miu, so he sent his kids over to help, Nelson said.
The group of drunken high school teenagers were gaslighting Miu. They said he was “looking for little girls” but there is zero evidence that there were any little girls on that river, he said.
When the lie was told, it was recorded on camera that Miu was “looking for little girls.” The group of teenagers were gaslighting and inciting the crowd that had gathered. The entire purpose of the gaslighting was to incite violence, Nelson said.
A group of 13 people surrounded Miu and were relentless in their yelling and screaming, and Nicolae Miu is wondering what is happening, he said.
The video shows when Miu is knocked down, the volume of laughing and cackling goes up, Nelson noted.
Nelson said that the person who had videotaped the incident started videotaping when the group began taunting Miu in an apparent attempt to videotape a group of teenagers knocking an old man down into the river.
The videotape was played in the courtroom, and during the first part of the video, the teenagers can be heard laughing at Miu, shouting at him and yelling taunts in a raucous and gleeful way that they seem to think is very funny. The tone of the shouting changes when the teenagers realize that members of their group have been stabbed and are bleeding.
Credibility
The case will come down to a matter of credibility. Miu said he was acting in self-defense, Nelson said.
Miu lied about the knife. He was, however, outnumbered, and he felt he needed to use it when he was surrounded by an angry mob, he said.
When Miu returned to his group, he was “white as a ghost” and wide-eyed and looked like he was suffering from serious trauma, Nelson said.
What other reason is there for Miu’s response? They came at him, and in fear, he reacted. The question is, can his actions be reasonable even if they were mistaken? Nelson asked.
The jury members must ask themselves, what would a reasonable person think in that situation?He walked away, and they followed. They told lies to incite the crowd, and the crowd gets louder and more intense, and they cut him off from an exit, he said.
The environment was “ripe for violence.” Miu had a heart attack and open heart surgery a couple of years ago, and he felt fragile. The crowd gave Miu every reason to believe they were not going to stop, Nelson said, asking the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.
The only reasonable hypothesis is that Nicolae Miu was afraid for his life, and that his reaction was reasonable, he said.
Apple River
The first witness in the case was Stephen Kaufman, owner of the River’s Edge Campground in New Richmond, which is where Nicolae Miu and his friends were staying along the Apple River.
Kaufman discussed various locations along the Apple River and talked about how long it can take to tube down the river from certain points. Kaufman was working on the day of the July 30, 2022, incident.
Rapist
The second witness was Ryan Nelson, who said Isaac Schuman was one of his best friends and that they had been friends since middle school.
Nelson testified that he had met his group of friends that day at Stillwater High School to go tubing on the Apple River.
Nelson was 17 years old at the time and was going to be a senior in high school. He testified that the group had taken “beers and seltzers” out on river, and that he had drank three or four beers.
Schuman’s blood alcohol level was at .219, and Ryan Nelson had said they were both impaired at about the same level, noted Corey Chirafisi, another attorney representing Miu.
Nelson said he did not know what his blood alcohol level was, but that yes, he had been impaired.
Nelson testified that he also was smoking marijuana, as were others in the group, although the victim who died was not smoking marijuana.
You could have walked away, but you did not. Nicolae Miu has as much right to use the river as anyone, Chirafisi said, and Ryan Nelson agreed.
Chirafisi asked what the group’s purpose was for calling a grown man they had never met before “a raper.”
Nelson said “it wasn’t me” who had called Miu a rapist.
Chirafisi asked if Nelson had told his friends to stop calling Miu “a raper,” but Nelson said he had not.
Issac was holding his arms up when he confronted Miu, who moved away, Chirafisi noted.
Chirafisi asked Nelson if he agreed that calling someone a pedophile is not the same as calling someone a jerk or an “a**hole,” and Nelson agreed.
No one in the group knew Nicolae Miu, but the group accused him of having sex with little children, Chirafisi said.
It was a group of 10 or 12 people versus one person, he said.
Someone on the video said “you have 10 seconds,” Chirafisi said.
Nelson testified that when they first saw Miu, the group had asked what he was doing, but he had not answered, and that he was afraid of Miu.
After the group was yelling at Miu and calling him names, Nelson testified that he had gone from frightened of Miu to “weirded out” and eventually agreed that when other people joined the group, he was no longer afraid of Miu.
When the group was surrounding Miu and taunting him, then your fear has left, Chirafisi said.
“Yes,” Nelson said
Your fear was reduced when more people arrived. When there were six of you, you were afraid of Miu, but then when there were 13 people around him, you had no fear or less fear, he said.
You knew it was 13 people versus one person, Chirafisi said.
“Yes,” Nelson replied.
Ryan Nelson had testified that Miu had punched a blond woman. But the video, and the still photo from the video, shows the blond woman never dropped the drink she was holding in her hand and never lost the cell phone tucked into the top of her swimming suit and that she did not go down into the water, Chirafisi said.
No one is stabbed until Miu is punched in the face and is knocked down into the water, he said.
When investigators interviewed the blond woman, even though witnesses said Miu punched her with the hand holding the knife, there were no marks on her face, he said.
At one point, the video shows the victim, Isaac Schuman, with his hands around Nicolae Miu’s throat.
Day 2
Testimony was halted at 4:30 p.m. April 1, and Judge Michael Waterman told the jury to not talk with anyone about the case, to not do any research, to not read anything on-line, and not to visit the site of the incident.
The trial was scheduled to resume at 8 a.m. April 2.
