The second day of Nicolae Miu’s murder trial on Tuesday was fraught with emotional testimony.
Isaac Schuman’s mother, Alina Hernandez, told the courtroom the 17-year-old was supposed to go golfing on July 30, 2022, but went tubing on the Apple River instead because his golfing buddy had to work.
Hernandez said she was drinking coffee on the deck of the family’s Stillwater home when her son told her his new plans. She told him she was hoping he’d pick up his dad from the airport later.
“He said, ‘I can pick Dad up.’ And I said, ‘No, just go have fun with your friends on the river,’” Hernandez recalled in St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson, Wis.
Before he left, she put sunscreen on his ears.
Just over two hours after floating down the western Wisconsin river, Schuman was fatally stabbed during a chaotic confrontation that he and others had with Miu, a then 52-year-old mechanical engineer who is also charged with stabbing and seriously injuring four others some 100 to 200 yards upstream from the Highway 35/64 bridge in Somerset.
Miu claimed he acted in self-defense after being attacked by a large group of floaters who accused him of being a “pedophile” while he was looking for his friend’s lost cellphone carrying a snorkel and goggles. Miu’s attorney, Aaron Nelson, told jurors on Monday that he was “outnumbered” and “feared for his life.”
Hernandez was the first witness called Tuesday, recalling how Isaac’s friend Owen Peloquin called her screaming that her son had been stabbed. After reaching the somber scene, she ran up into one of the ambulances, thinking it was her son “sitting up in there. I started crawling into the ambulance and I realized it wasn’t Isaac, it was one of the other kids.”
When she climbed out, she noticed Isaac by his hair, his body lying on the riverbank. “I knew it was him,” she said. “And they were trying to perform CPR on him.”
Schuman was stabbed in the torso with great force, causing wounds to his torso, chest and heart. He died almost instantly, prosecutors said Monday.
Hernandez broke down crying while describing three photos shown in court: her son’s 11th-grade picture from Stillwater Area High School, his 17th birthday and one she took of him and their dog with a trailer he bought for his business detailing cars and boats.
“He texted me and said, ‘Mom, come out and see my new trailer.’ The dog and I ran out,” she said, weeping.
The other victims — Rhyley Mattison, then 24, of Burnsville; A.J. Martin, then 22, of Elk River; and Dante Carlson and Anthony Carlson, who were both in their early 20s and from Luck, Wis. — suffered puncture or slash wounds in the abdomen or upper torso. They were taken by air and ground ambulances to Regions Hospital in St. Paul in conditions that ranged from critical to serious.
Miu is charged with first-degree intentional homicide in Schuman’s death and four counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide. Prosecutors added a misdemeanor battery charge after the original criminal complaint against Miu for allegedly punching a woman before the stabbings.
Miu pleaded not guilty to all charges in September 2022. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Friend started recording
Witness Jawahn Cockfield cries as he testifies during the second day of trial at the St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson. (Elizabeth Flores / Pool via Star Tribune)
The prosecution also called Schuman’s friend Jawahn Cockfield to testify Tuesday. Cockfield, who was 17, took two cellphone videos of the confrontation — one 9 seconds long, shortly after Miu approached the tubers, then a 3½-minute recording that shows the killing and its frantic aftermath.
In the shorter video, which was played in the courtroom, Cockfield was heard yelling: “Grown man trying to have sex with little girls! Who the hell? What the (expletive)? He’s a raper!”
Deputy District Attorney Brian Smestad asked Cockfield why he began recording. He said Miu was looking “suspicious” and “he had said a weird comment.”
“That’s kind of why I started recording in the first place,” Cockfield, now 19, said. “Because he had his snorkel, and it was like 2-feet-deep water. So, like, ‘what are you doing?’ And then he just said a weird comment, something about, like, some little girls.”
Cockfield said he called Miu a “pedophile” but didn’t touch him throughout the ordeal.
Cockfield said Miu punched a “blonde lady” who was telling him to get away, causing her group of friends to go toward Miu and “try to fight them, I guess.” The alleged assault is not on the video, but Cockfield said he was looking in a different direction while filming.
“He hit a woman?” Cockfield yelled. “He hit a woman?”
Prosecutors then played part of the video that shows the aftermath of the stabbings. Someone yelled, “What the (expletive)? He’s dying! He’s dying, bro!”
“What?! Are we serious? Is this real? Oh my God. Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? That’s not blood! That’s not blood! That’s not blood!” Cockfield yells in the video. “That’s not Isaac! Oh my God! Oh my God! This isn’t real! This isn’t real!”
Cockfield, who plays football and wrestles at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., broke down crying in court. He put his fingers to eyes and dabbed them with tissues.
Cockfield said he didn’t see where Miu went, and that people stopped to help get Schuman to the riverbank. He followed.
Cockfield said he told police he had a video, and that a still frame photo of Miu was taken from it. About an hour later and a mile downstream, officers used photos to identify Miu and take him into custody.
‘Antagonizing?’
In cross-examination, Miu’s attorney Corey Chirafisi asked Cockfield if he told investigators that Miu said “anything about looking for little girls?” Cockfield said he did not, that he told them he was looking for his snorkel.
“Well, in a situation where you say he’s looking for little girls, do you think it would be important that you would tell officers that he told you he was looking for little girls?” Chirafisi asked.
“Yeah,” Cockfield said.
“But you never do that, do you?” Chirafisi asked.
“I guess I didn’t,” Cockfield said.
“Did you think it was important?” Chirafisi asked.
“I guess there were more things that were more important,” Cockfield said. “But that is important in the grand scheme. Yes.”
Chirafisi asked Cockfield if he believed telling Miu that he “can’t have sex with little girls and calling him a raper would be considered antagonizing?”
Upon questioning, Cockfield admitted he was laughing as Miu was being pushed into the water.
“After he hit a woman, I think he was getting sort of what he deserved,” he said.
RELATED: Murder or self-defense? Apple River stabbing jury to decide.
District Attorney Karl Anderson asked Cockfield in the redirect examination if he was glad he recorded the confrontation.
“Yes,” he said.
Prosecutors showed a picture of Miu facing two women, one of whom he allegedly punched, setting off the pushing and shoving and stabbings.
“What do you see behind him?” Anderson asked.
“Open,” Cockfield said.
The trial is set to resume at 8 a.m. Wednesday, and is expected to run through April 12.
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