HUDSON, Wis — Nicolae Miu's defense rested Tuesday after the defendant took the stand in his own defense.
Miu, 54, is charged with one count of first-degree intentional homicide and four counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide for a deadly stabbing spree that took place on the Apple River on July 30, 2022. Prosecutors say Miu pulled a knife during a confrontation with people from two separate groups, fatally stabbing 17-year-old Isaac Schuman of Stillwater and wounding four others, one of those victims nearly dying as well.
Miu's legal team called the explosion of violence a clear case of self-defense, saying Miu was surrounded by more than a dozen people who were screaming, taunting and physically attacking him.
Closing arguments will heard Wednesday. The jurors will be allowed to consider lesser charges, at the request of the state.
Day 7
2:50 p.m.
Prosecutors opened by playing a video shot by Larrion Davis, a witness at the scene who was recording the Nicolae Miu encounter.
The video was played at full speed and slowed down, but Miu said he couldn’t positively identify himself because of how grainy the video was.
When asked about why he left the scene when police officers arrived, he said he was afraid to go into the area. Prosecutors continued to press him about specific details, but Miu said he couldn't remember.
"I don't remember talking to anybody," he said. "I don't even remember going down the river or up the river. I was just stunned. I don't remember anything."
Prosecutors asked if Miu remembered seeing an officer with their gun drawn when he arrived with his group at Village Park, and Miu maintained that he was afraid of the area.
"I was afraid of everybody," he said.
"You were afraid of the officer?" prosecutors asked.
"I was afraid of anything and everybody," Miu said. "I was afraid of anything. I was still in shock so I was afraid of everything."
Prosecutors say when Miu and his group made it further up the path, officers were able to identify him. Miu recalled being stopped by police, but said he couldn't remember any of the details.
Prosecutors then played video of Miu speaking with St. Croix County Sheriff Scott Knudson. In the video, Miu told Knudson that he had heard someone had been stabbed and that he fit the description.
"Did you see that fight on the river?" Knudson can be heard asking.
"I heard about it," Miu responded. "I seen people gathered around and I went over to talk to see if somebody saw, and that's about it."
Miu told Knudson he heard people screaming but didn't see anybody injured.
Following the video, prosecutors asked why he lied to Knudson, he said he didn't remember. He admitted to lying but couldn't recall the conversation.
Prosecutors accused Miu of fishing for information — pretending to not know the details in an effort to learn more about the situation — but he continued to say he couldn't remember the interaction.
Miu admitted to lying to law enforcement about two of the boys pulling a knife on him, saying "I told her what I remembered."
"As you can see, I was very confused," replied Miu.
He, again, admitted to being the only one with a knife.
"In the video, I totally lied about the knife," Miu admitted. "I didn't remember a lot. I didn't remember a lot of details. I didn't remember anything. I don't even remember the interview. Just looking at the video, I look at it like anyone remembering it for the first time."
Prosecutors later showed Miu the knife used in the stabbing, and asked "That's your knife, right?"
"Yes," Miu replied.
"That's the knife you used to stab these people?" Prosecutors asked.
"That's the knife I used to defend myself," Miu responded.
Defense attorney Aaron Nelson later asked if Miu felt he was "fit enough" to take on 13 teens and adults in a fight without a weapon, and Miu responded "No."
Nelson then replayed video of Miu getting pushed around, including at one point getting pushed into the water. He went on to asked== him about what he remembered from that day.
"Do you have any memory of just randomly stabbing people?" Nelson asked.
"No," Miu replied.
"What is your memory as to why you did what you did?" asked Nelson.
"I was afraid for my life, and what I did, I had to do to defend myself," Miu said.
Nelson continued to ask if he remembered specific details, including whether he remembered Tony Carlson attempting to break up the fight, and Miu said no.
"I didn't know who he was but I remember being held in the water," Miu said.
1 p.m.
Nicolae Miu returned to the stand following lunch recess, picking up at the point where the conflict between him and two groups was escalating.
Defense attorney Aaron Nelson restarted the questioning, with Miu telling the courtroom he was holding a knife in his right hand while raising his left arm in an effort to push her out of his space. The defendant says at that point someone punched him in the side of the head.
Nelson asked Miu if the video and still frames seen throughout the trial had served to refresh his memory about the events of July 30. Miu said yes, but added that sometimes his memory of what happened is different than the video shows.
The defense then called up images of Miu falling after he was struck. The defendant said he hit his head on rocks in the river, and felt he was going under the water.
"Number one, I was stunned," Miu reflected. "I felt backward. I felt very afraid, of course. I've never been in a situation like this, or a fight in my life." He testified at that point he had been struck in the head four times, including hitting it on the rocks.
Miu told jurors he was at a 10 out of 10 on the fear scale, and it felt like he was surrounded.
"Why did you use your knife?" Nelson asked.
"I feared for my life," Miu recalled.
"Did you feel like you could escape?"
"Not from that position."
Nelson then showed an image of Miu with someone's hand around his throat. "The whole time, I felt like I was going to die... I reached out and stabbed him."
When asked if he was trying to kill somebody, Miu replied without hesitation. "Absolutely not. I was just trying to defend myself."
The defendant said after the stabbings he turned and made his way back to his group. Miu said he realized he had soiled himself during the physical altercation, and described his head as being thick, in a fog. He does remember taking the knife On the way back to his group, he tossed the knife on the riverbank.
"Why did you throw the knife?" Nelson asked.
"I don't know... I was afraid. I felt like I had to throw it away," Miu replied.
Miu told the courtroom he has nightmares about what happened on the river, a replaying of the attacks that led to where he is today. The defendant said he has sought medical treatment for those nightmares.
In his last line of questioning, defense attorney Aaron Nelson emphasized how Miu believed he was under attack.
"Did you believe you needed to use that knife?" Nelson asked
"Absolutely," Miu insisted. "I believe I would have been killed that day."
During cross-examination, prosecutors asked Miu about his decision to go look for his friend's lost phone, a moment that would lead to the encounter with the teens and the Carlson group. Miu was questioned about why he took off his shirt and his hat before going snorkeling but failed to take the knife out of his pocket. Prosecutor Brian Smestad questioned why it was with him, insinuating he was preparing for trouble. They referred to images that captured him touching the knife in his pocket when the teens began yelling at him.
The prosecution then asked Miu why he kept going when the teens made it clear they didn't want him around, and noted that at one point he was returning to his group until one of the boys called him "a raper." Prosecutors then noted that videotape captured the defendant grabbing the teens' tubes and touching their legs. "Woah, woah, woah!" someone in Schuman's group was heard saying on videotape.
Miu admitted that at one point he purposely stood in the way of the teens' tubes so they could not get past.
Smestad then noted that when Madison Coen entered the fray she told him to go, but Miu stayed and engaged instead. The defendant insisted he was looking for his missing goggles. The state then scrolled through a video clip that showed Miu fidgeting with his knife in his pocket as the conflict heated up.
Another videotaped moment from the fatal incident shows the teens yelling at Miu, who is captured wearing what Smestad called a smile. "I'm not smiling," Miu testified. "I'm confused and annoyed."
The prosecution then turned to the physical exchange that involved Miu, Coen and Dante Carlson. Smestad said during today's testimony Miu admitted he did something physical to Coen to set things off.
"She was in my face, I could smell the alcohol on her breath," Miu responded.
Smestad continued to press the defendant, detailing how after being pushed back down into the river, Miu put the blade of his knife in A.J. Martin's belly and ripped upwards. The prosecution said after stabbing Martin, nobody was physically engaged with Miu, no one was hitting or kicking him, and yet he still lunged and stabbed Tony Carlson twice as he stepped in to help his injured friends.
"At that point, I couldn't tell what was going on," the defendant said. "I couldn't see, I couldn't hear... I was fearing for my life. I had merely seconds to think."
Smestad told jurors that Miu stabbed Ryhley Mattison, and then Isaac Schuman as he tried to come to the woman's aid. Video showed Schuman trying to push Miu away, and then the defendant inflicting the fatal wound.
"As he's pushing you, you stab him in the heart," Smestad said.
When the prosecutor noted that none of the people whom Miu stabbed were armed, the defendant agreed.
The line of questioning during cross-examination inferred that Miu was looking for trouble himself, and could have simply walked away.
The court recessed just before 2:40 p.m. with prosecutors set to play a video taken by one of the witnesses at the scene.
11:20 a.m.
After waiving his right to remain silent, Nicolae Miu took the stand to defend himself against charges of first-degree homicide and attempted first-degree homicide.
Attorney Aaron Nelson opened the defense's case by showing an image of two women confronting Miu on the Apple River on July 30, 2022. Miu, noticeably thinner than he was on video and in photos from that day, described how Madison Coen and Ryhley Mattison were yelling at him before getting physical. He said the women put their hands on him, squeezing his arm and pushing him, recalling that the yelling was very loud and his heart rate began climbing. Miu said he started developing what he called "tunnel vision," and voices became garbled and unintelligible.
When Nelson asked him what happened next, Miu said he used his left hand and "pushed her away from my face," insisting he didn't intend to harm Mattison or injure her in any manner.
The defense stepped back to earlier that morning, and Miu told jurors his friend Ernesto Torres called to remind him to bring his knife to cut rope for the tubes. The defendant said he had owned the knife for 10 years, recalling that he carried it everywhere and used it for all kinds of things like cutting the insulation off wires or to use as a screwdriver.
After admitting he lied to investigators after claiming he was not carrying a knife, Miu testified that he went to look for his friend's lost phone not intending to hurt anyone but encountered a group of teenagers who started asking him what he was doing. Miu told the court he saw one of the teens carrying a phone in a bag and walked over to see if it was the one his friend lost.
Nelson had Miu look at a series of still frames that captured the situation escalating. He told jurors that he was then looking for his goggles and snorkel but then realized the teens were off their tubes and coming toward him. Miu said at that point he saw adults from another group approaching from the other side of the river. He walked over to them and encountered Madison Coen, with the six teens still behind him.
The defense called for an image that showed Coen pointing down the river, and Miu said she was yelling at him and telling him to get out of there. "She was too loud, she never gave me a chance to talk, she was yelling and telling me to go down river," Miu maintained. He added that others were shouting at him and calling him names, saying he was "looking for little girls."
"I felt frustrated, annoyed," he recalled, saying the accusation was untrue. "They were yelling things that were untrue and pointing at me.
Nelson's line of questioning turned to Miu's escalating encounter with Madison Coen. The defendant testified that Coen grabbed his right arm and pulled him towards her. "I told her not to touch me. I didn't give her permission to do so."
Miu testified, he motioned for his group to come help him but did not yell, saying he felt another loud voice would escalate the situation. No one came to help. Miu recalled his level of fear was creeping up as he was surrounded and the teens continued to yell and point at him. At that point, the defendant said, he reached for his knife and pulled it from his swim trunks.
Another group of photos showed Miu again raising his hand to summon members of his group to help, and the sequence of images then showed the defendant engaged with Ryhley Mattison, his knife opened up and ready to use.
Court then recessed for lunch, with Miu's testimony set to resume when the jury returns.
10:50 a.m.
With the jury excused for a break, defense attorney Corey Chirafisi introduced a motion to dismiss the four counts of attempted first-degree homicide charges against Nicolae Miu, insisting that the facts introduced by the state do not support that the defendant was trying to kill A.J. Martin, Tony Carlson or Ryhley Mattison. All three suffered stab wounds but survived.
St. Croix County District Judge R. Michael Waterman disagreed, ruling that prosecutors have provided sufficient evidence to warrant those charges remaining in play.
9:10 a.m.
Next up on the witness stand was St. Croix County Sheriff's Lt. Brandie Hart, who was at home doing yardwork on July 30, 2022 when she was summoned to assist with the mass stabbing on the Apple River.
Clark told jurors she arrived at the river scene and conducted an interview with the defendant's wife Sondra Miu before heading for the St. Croix County jail to interview Nicolae Miu himself. Prosecutors played a videotape of the interview showing the defendant dressed in jail orange, sitting calmly at a table and conversing with Lt. Hart. He shared his personal information and then asked the lieutenant if his wife was OK, even smiling at times during the interview.
While making small talk Miu told Hart he had never been in trouble with the law.
Miu had a number of questions for the lieutenant as she read him his Miranda rights, including when he could secure an attorney. When she told him he could stop answering questions at any time, he told her he likely would be doing so at some point.
When she began questioning Miu about the confrontation on the river, he immediately claimed self-defense "They came on to me. The hit me, they got on top of me, and I don't remember anything after that," the videotaped interview captured him saying. "I was so fearful, I didn't know what these people were doing to us."
Miu told Lt. Hart that one of the kids attacked him with a knife, and that he took the weapon from that person. He said he was trying to find his friend's phone when "the kids" began verbally attacking him and calling him names like "child molester." He said another group - made up of mostly girls - then approached and joined the fray.
"They attacked me, and I went into self-defense. I went into self-defense mode," Miu claimed. "I was shocked, nobody knew exactly what happened."
During the interview, Hart asked the defendant to sketch out a map of where and how the incident unfolded. Miu said members of the two groups approached with one person taking his snorkel, and multiple others pushing him down in the water and hitting him.
"I feared for my life. When they started to hit me and a kid pointed a knife at me, I thought that was it," Miu recalled. "I don't know why they were being so mean to me. I just don't know."
Miu told the lieutenant had been drinking a significant amount but told her it was just beer, as he did not drink hard liquor. He mentioned his health issues, including a quadruple bypass.
When shown a picture of the encounter from a smartphone Miu pointed out two of the teens and said they both pulled knives on him. He said he took one of the knives and "started swinging," admitting he didn't know who he hit or if he hurt anyone.
"Why these things happen is beyond me," he said. "They were attacking me from all directions, and I seriously feared for my life."
When Hart asked him why Miu and his group didn't "get the hell out of there," he said they wanted to stay and be witnesses to the incident.
Miu eventually asked the lieutenant what happened to those involved in the conflict, and she shared that four people were taken to the hospital with injuries and one person died.
"Oh my God... oh no," he moaned, holding his head in his hands. "My whole life is down the tubes."
During cross-examination, defense attorney Corey Chirafisi acknowledged that Miu's claim he wrestled the knife used in the stabbings away from one of the teens was false, but emphasized that the defendant never wavered while insisting the stabbing was self-defense, that he was fearful as the confrontation unfolded, and that he was attacked by others on the river.
Chirafisi emphasized that Miu was honest during the interview, and didn't lie or misstate the facts of what happened.
Prosecutors used redirect to contradict the defense's assertion of honesty, pointing out that Miu had already been informed he was arrested for homicide but acted surprised when Lt. Hart told him someone died. They also hammered at Miu's claims during the interview that two of the teens were armed with knives and he was not carrying one as proof the defendant was attempting to mislead investigators.
8 a.m.
The day began with prosecutors calling Assistant Ramsey County Medical Examiner Victor Froloff to the stand.
Froloff was responsible for performing the autopsy on 17-year-old Isaac Schuman and the state asked him to describe the injuries the teen suffered after being stabbed on the Apple River two years ago, allegedly by Nicolae Miu. Froloff told jurors that Schuman was stabbed in the upper left chest, with the knife blade puncturing his chest cavity and left lung, eventually penetrating the left ventricle of the teen's heart. He testified that the punctures filled Schuman's chest cavity with blood and air, causing his death.
He recorded the depth of the stab wound as 4.3 inches.
Prosecutors asked about the victim's height and weight, setting up a comparison with the size of his alleged attacker. Schuman was measured at 6 feet 1 inch tall and 134 pounds. At the time of the incident, Nicolae Miu was nearly 250 pounds.
It is common to do blood draws when performing an autopsy, Froloff shared, and told the jury that Isaac Schuman's blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was .21, more than twice the legal limit.
When asked by prosecutors, the assistant ME told the courtroom that Schuman's official cause of death was a stab wound to the upper left chest, and the manner of death was homicide.
During cross-examination the defense team focused on the depth of the fatal wound, asking Froloff if he would determine the force of the wound, and asked if it was possible to determine whether the victim was moving forward, standing still or falling backward at the time of the injury. The defense followed up by inquiring whether a person moving toward the knife would make a wound deeper.
"So many variables... I can't speculate," Froloff responded.
Tuesday marks Day 7 of the high-profile trial. The prosecution has rapidly moved through its witness list and indicated Monday that they only have one or two more people to question. The defense team has already called a couple of its main witnesses due to the unavailability of some prosecution witnesses, meaning Miu himself could take the stand sometime late Tuesday morning or early afternoon.
The prosecution's case has been built on video of the actual confrontation shot on the river that fateful day, and emotional testimony from those involved in the altercation and its aftermath. During cross-examination of prosecution witnesses Miu's defense team has hammered away at inconsistencies between recollections and memories from the stand and the actual statements that witnesses made to investigators on the day of the stabbings two years ago.
If convicted by a St. Croix County jury, Nicolae Miu could be sentenced to life in prison.
WATCH MORE ON KARE 11+
Download the free KARE 11+ app for Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV and other smart TV platforms to watch more from KARE 11 anytime! The KARE 11+ app includes live streams of all of KARE 11's newscasts. You'll also find on-demand replays of newscasts; the latest from KARE 11 Investigates, Breaking the News and the Land of 10,000 Stories; exclusive programs like Verify and HeartThreads; and Minnesota sports talk from our partners at Locked On Minnesota.
- Add KARE 11+ on Roku here or by searching for KARE 11 in the Roku Channel Store.
- Add KARE 11+ on Fire TV here or by searching for KARE 11 in the Amazon App Store.
- Learn more about the KARE 11+ app for Apple TV in the Apple App Store.
- Learn more about KARE 11+ here.
Watch more local news:
Watch the latest local news from the Twin Cities and across Minnesota in our YouTube playlist: