A sentencing date has been scheduled for Nicolae Miu, who was found guilty last week of fatally stabbing 17-year-old Isaac Schuman and wounding four other tubers on western Wisconsin’s Apple River in 2022.
Miu, 54, of Prior Lake, will be sentenced in St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson at 8:30 a.m. July 31, two years and a day after his confrontation with two groups of tubers in Somerset.
A jury of six women and six men deliberated for about six hours over two days last week before finding Miu guilty of first-degree reckless homicide, four counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety with a dangerous weapon and one count of misdemeanor battery while using a dangerous weapon.
Miu could face 97 years in prison if Judge R. Michael Waterman sentences him to consecutive terms on the counts. The homicide conviction carries up to 45 years in prison.
Jurors could not agree on the most serious charges against Miu: first-degree intentional homicide, which carried a potential life sentence, and four counts of attempted intentional first-degree homicide. When they didn’t find him guilty of those counts, they moved to the lesser charges that prosecutors added the day before closing arguments.
Miu testified that he feared for his life and acted in self-defense when he stabbed Schuman, of Stillwater, and seriously injured tubers not in the teen’s group: Ryhley Mattison, then 24, of Burnsville; A.J. Martin, then 22, of Elk River; and brothers Dante Carlson and Tony Carlson, both in their early 20s, of Luck, Wis. All of them suffered puncture or slash wounds in the abdomen or upper torso. Schuman bled to death.
Miu testified that he was carrying a snorkel and goggles while looking for a friend’s lost cell phone contained in a waterproof floating bag and that his “fear scale” kept growing during the July 30, 2022, confrontation. His attorneys tried to portray a scene in which Miu was surrounded by a drunken, angry mob who called him a “pedophile” and “raper” and attacked him.
The prosecution said Miu had opportunities to walk away despite taunts from the teens and that the confrontation turned violent after he became angry and punched Madison Coen, who was part of the Carlson brothers’ group.
“Absolutely senseless and horrific acts of violence and all Nicolae Miu had to do was walk away,” District Attorney Karl Anderson said in the state’s closing argument on April 11. “All he had to do was walk away. That’s what you’ve seen in this case.”
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