The attorney for the Prior Lake, Minnesota, man charged with stabbing a teenager to death and wounding four others on the Apple River in western Wisconsin laid out his client's self-defense claim in court Friday.
The hearing in St. Croix District Court in Hudson, Wisconsin, ended with Judge Michael Waterman scheduling an arraignment for Thursday. Then, Nicolae Miu will have the opportunity to enter pleas to first-degree murder and attempted murder charges in the killing of Stillwater teenager Isaac Schuman and the stabbing four others during a confrontation among tubers on the Apple River near Somerset.
Officially, the 38-minute hearing's primary purpose was for Waterman to determine whether the prosecution has presented enough evidence for there to be a felony trial. After hearing testimony about the incident from Sheriff's Lt. Brandie Hart, the judge said there was sufficient evidence.
Miu, 52, remains in custody in lieu of $1 million cash bond. He appeared in person in the Hudson courtroom for the first time, having previously been present only through a video hookup with the jail.
He sat quietly at the defense table next to defense attorney Corey Chirafisi. Whenever the livestream camera was on Miu, he was mostly looking down but occasionally raised his eyes as his attorney and District Attorney Karl Anderson questioned Hart.
Beyond its procedural necessity, the hearing also gave hints through questions posed to Hart about how the prosecution and the defense hope to prevail at trial.
Charafisi asked Hart whether Miu "attacked" anyone before he was physically confronted by the group.
Hart, who based her testimony on witness accounts and a bystander's cellphone video that captured nearly all of the encounter, said he did not.
"You see people attacking him, and he responds?" To which the lieutenant said, "Yes."
Under prosecution questioning, Hart testified that Miu had an opportunity to leave the increasingly hostile scene and that there was no evidence that anyone confronting him had any weapons, despite Miu's contention that they had two knives.
Hart outlined the sequence of events presented in the charges, that Miu was confronted by one group of tubers demanding he "get away" while accusing him of looking for little girls.
She recounted how others joined in moving toward Miu and yelling at him to leave. From there, Miu was shoved into the water at least twice. He responded by taking a knife out of a pocket and stabbing five people. She said Miu stabbed one of his combatants and moved the knife "up the torso."
Miu then walked back to the group he was with and did not call 911, Hart said.
The lieutenant said she questioned Miu about having a knife, and he said he did not. His wife, however, told law enforcement that he did have a knife, and the video showed him with one. Hart said the knife used to wound the tubers was located on a riverbank.
Chirafisi built his questions around the contention that Miu was far outnumbered by a physically intimidating and angry group of people, some of whom were accusing him of lurking around for lascivious purposes.
Chirafisi won high-profile not guilty verdicts for Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges in November, after the teenager testified he acted in self-defense in the summer of 2020, when he fatally shot two people during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Under questioning by Chirafisi, Hart testified that, according to witnesses, Miu showed no signs of aggression as he first jogged toward several people who were on the river with their tubes roped together. She acknowledged that he was not yelling or being threatening before someone demanded that he get away from them.
Pivoting to what Hart had seen in the three-minute bystander video of the encounter, which was not played in court, Chriafisi asked whether there were "little girls" in proximity to the confrontation, Hart said, "I didn't see any."
At one point, Hart estimated, there were more than six people who had Miu surrounded on three sides and yelling at him. The video showed that after putting his knife in his hand, Miu fell backward in the water from being struck in the face, she said. He got up and was soon pushed back in the water again once, maybe twice, Hart continued.
Soon, people had surrounded him on all sides, Hart testified.
"There's no place to go at that point, right?" the defense attorney asked. "Yes," the lieutenant responded.
The video kept rolling as the stabbing began and ended when Miu walked away, Hart said.
His being attacked "is borne out on that video, yes," Chirafisi asked. Again, Hart answered, "Yes."
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