Gruesome video shown at trial on fatal Apple River stabbing

A graphic video depicting the final moments of teenager Isaac Schuman’s life was shown in St. Croix County Circuit Court on Monday, the opening day of Nicolae Miu’s trial. The 54-year-old Prior Lake man is charged with stabbing Schuman and four others in a 2022 fight on the Apple River.

Filmed from just a few feet away by a friend of Schuman’s, the three-minute, 25-second cellphone video shows how an encounter between Miu and a group of teenage boys quickly and chaotically turned from shouting to pushing and shoving to violent stabbings.

Even as people fall into the water and the river turns red with blood, some bystanders don’t seem to understand what’s happening as the confrontation turns fatal.

“Is this real?” one person shouts amid yelling and screaming in the incident’s immediate aftermath.

Schuman, stabbed once in the torso with such force that the knife went through two ribs and his heart, died almost immediately, prosecutors revealed Monday. He was 17.

The trial is expected to last two weeks, and a conviction could mean life in prison for Miu, who has claimed self-defense. A jury of 14 people were chosen Monday morning, with St. Croix County Circuit Court Judge R. Michael Waterman telling the eight men and six women that two of the jurors will be deemed alternates.

It was clear on Monday that the video shot by Schuman’s friend Jawahn Cockfield will play a central role in the case, as both the prosecution and defense said it would help prove their version of what happened.

In his opening statement Monday, St. Croix County District Attorney Karl E. Anderson said jurors would come to see the incident as a “senseless and horrific act of violence when all Nicolae had to do was walk away.”

After positioning a large photograph of Schuman before the jury, Anderson said jurors would hear how Miu came near Schuman’s group while they were drifting down the river in inner tubes and didn’t respond when the boys asked him what he was doing. Their worries escalated as they shouted at Miu to go away and he didn’t leave, Anderson said. A second group of tubers was drawn to the confrontation and soon some 13 people stood in the shallow river near Miu and shouted at him to go, saying it some 20 times before the fight broke out, Anderson said.

Anderson then walked jurors through a series of images pulled from the video while describing many of the same allegations laid out in the criminal complaint. Miu initially walked away but then turned and, holding his goggles and snorkel in his mouth, ran a few steps back to the group of high school boys as they taunted him, Anderson said.

As a fight broke out, Miu was knocked to the ground. The video shows he had pulled a knife from his pocket by this point, and as people come near or put their hands on Miu to push him, he slashes at them with the knife, stabbing Schuman, Rhyley Mattison, A.J. Martin, Dante Carlson and Tony Carlson. The others were hospitalized for up to a month as they recovered from serious wounds, Anderson said.

Miu then walked away from the scene as people screamed or called 911 for help. Miu can be seen in the video walking to one side of the river and tossing something into the woods near a spot where investigators later found a knife. Anderson went on to show how Miu left the scene and told the group of people he was with, including his wife, Sondra, to continue down the river. Miu was found about an hour later at the point where tubers exit the river and was taken into custody.

Miu’s defense attorney, Aaron Nelson, said the video tells a different story, that Miu was alone in the water with 13 strangers. “Thirteen drunk, angry strangers,” Nelson said. He shared biographical details of Miu’s life, including that he immigrated to the United States as a teenager from Romania and can speak five languages.

An autopsy found Schuman’s blood-alcohol level at .219%, Nelson said, and other members of his group acknowledged they were drinking and some were using marijuana that day.

Nelson said the boys were taunting Miu with names, calling him a predator and saying that he was “looking for little girls.” When the fight broke out, Miu was knocked into the water and “in that moment he feared for his life and he responded in self-defense,” Nelson said.

Miu was only looking for a friend’s phone that had fallen in the water when the incident began, Nelson said. The boys could have left him alone and continued down the river but they chose to stay and harass Miu, Nelson said. “They stay to heckle, they stay to intimidate,” he said.

Miu eventually stood up, and Nelson pointed to an image from the video that he said showed Schuman’s hands reaching for Miu’s neck. Nelson said this was Schuman’s attempt to strangle Miu.

The trial continues Tuesday as the prosecution calls more witnesses to support its case.

Miu faces one count of intentional first degree homicide for Schuman’s death, and four counts of attempted first degree intentional homicide for the other stabbings.