Nicolae (Nick) Miu (52) stabbed Isaac Schuman (17) to death and injured four other young adults while tubing on Wisconsin's Apple River.

[mdcastle]

He's hired Kyle Rittenhouse's attorney

https://www.startribune.com/man-char...use/600196077/

Some more details about the incident from the article:

Miu told authorities that he acted in self-defense when several people confronted him as he searched for a friend's lost cellphone Saturday in the Apple River. He said some of the people "produced two weapons," hit him and were on top of him at one point while calling him a child molester.

A key piece of evidence in the case is a video recorded by a man in a group of 20-something tubers, some of whom shoved Miu and accused him of looking for underage girls... After a few minutes, Miu fatally stabbed Schuman in the upper abdomen before stabbing or slashing the others, according to the charges. Ryhley Mattison, one of the attack's four survivors, remained in Regions Hospital in St. Paul on Friday as she recovers from a punctured lung and an injured diaphragm. The 24-year-old from the Twin Cities said she was among about a dozen friends relaxing at the river when they stepped in on behalf of a younger group that alleged Miu was making sexually suggestive comments. "My friend said [to Miu] he needed to go away, he needed to leave," Mattison said. "He ended up punching her in the face." Mattison, acknowledging that she had been drinking, continued, "Maybe I yelled at him or punched him back." She said she was in water below her waist and Miu "was just standing there, staring at me, and he lunged at me. It felt like he punched me in the side. I looked down, and I was bleeding out." Mattison said she did not know what to do and "everything else was a blur...I was pushed down the river a little bit...The cops pulled me out of the river, and they laid me down until the ambulance came."

Some points:
Wisconsin law doesn't have an affirmative duty to retreat, but a jury is allowed to consider a failure to retreat when possible as a factor in whether deadly force was justified.
This being the Apple River on a weekend in Wisconsin and considering what we know of the case, that we're finding alcohol was involved is the least surprising thing ever.

[mdcastle]

Preliminary hearing found enough evidence to be bound over for trial
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/ne...t-nicolae-miu/

People on the local Facebook groups are definately taking both sides on this one.

[Boston Babe 73]

The pervy asshole deleted his Facebook.

[mdcastle]

Trial to start next week.

https://www.fox9.com/news/apple-rive...olae-miu-trial

[mdcastle]

Starting right now. Live stream link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGcReZs9wk

[Boston Babe 73]

Starting right now. Live stream link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGcReZs9wk

I'm curious to see how this comes out. He deserves to be convicted IMHO.

[mdcastle]

My thoughts after watching the first week of the trial and keeping an open mind:

• Overall this seems to be overcharged. Legally speaking premeditation can be formed in seconds, but juries really, really want minutes, hours, or even days for a Murder 1 conviction, and tend to punish prosecutors that overcharge. IMHO this should have been charged as manslaughter or 2nd degree murder, the whole thing has a drunken bar fight vibe.
  
  
• Most of the people involved including the defendent seemed to be somewhere between "drunk as skunks" and "comotose" with regard to their BAC. The decadent had a BAC of .219 and was described as "the least drunk person on the river".
  
  
• No one disputes that Miu approached the first group of five boys and then grabbed a hold of their tubes and generally got in their way. I've seen nothing to suggest that he wasn't in fact looking for the phone that a member of his group had lost earlier. Maybe he say one of the teens holding a phone that looked like the one that was lost?
  
  
• When asked what he was doing, enough witnesses have said he said that he was "looking for little girls" that I think he really said that. My take is it was meant to be sarcastic, but the teens were too drunk to realize that and that's when they started yelling about home being a pedophile and rapist
  
  
• The whole situation seems to have been dying down until more teens and young adults from two other groups started approaching, until there were eventually 13 of them.
  
  
• The confrontation got physical off camera so we'll never know for sure what exactly happened, but it appears Maddy either touched or shoved Miu (at the very least she was waving her phone inches from his face), and then Miu either shoved, punched, or slapped Maddy. One of the boys shoves Miu hard enough to knock him down in the river, then he gets up and all hell breaks loose.
  
  
• My feeling is that there was so much chaos going on and considering the 13 on 1 situation, based on the video alone a jury won't conclude it wasn't self defense beyond a reasonable doubt, but there's a good chance he's convicted based on him acting shady afterwords. Instead of waiting for police to arrive he tries to ditch the knife and flee, and then lies to police multiple times.

[Boston Babe 73]

My thoughts after watching the first week of the trial and keeping an open mind:

• Overall this seems to be overcharged. Legally speaking premeditation can be formed in seconds, but juries really, really want minutes, hours, or even days for a Murder 1 conviction, and tend to punish prosecutors that overcharge. IMHO this should have been charged as manslaughter or 2nd degree murder, the whole thing has a drunken bar fight vibe.
  
  
• Most of the people involved including the defendent seemed to be somewhere between "drunk as skunks" and "comotose" with regard to their BAC. The decadent had a BAC of .219 and was described as "the least drunk person on the river".
  
  
• No one disputes that Miu approached the first group of five boys and then grabbed a hold of their tubes and generally got in their way. I've seen nothing to suggest that he wasn't in fact looking for the phone that a member of his group had lost earlier. Maybe he say one of the teens holding a phone that looked like the one that was lost?
  
  
• When asked what he was doing, enough witnesses have said he said that he was "looking for little girls" that I think he really said that. My take is it was meant to be sarcastic, but the teens were too drunk to realize that and that's when they started yelling about home being a pedophile and rapist
  
  
• The whole situation seems to have been dying down until more teens and young adults from two other groups started approaching, until there were eventually 13 of them.
  
  
• The confrontation got physical off camera so we'll never know for sure what exactly happened, but it appears Maddy either touched or shoved Miu (at the very least she was waving her phone inches from his face), and then Miu either shoved, punched, or slapped Maddy. One of the boys shoves Miu hard enough to knock him down in the river, then he gets up and all hell breaks loose.
  
  
• My feeling is that there was so much chaos going on and considering the 13 on 1 situation, based on the video alone a jury won't conclude it wasn't self defense beyond a reasonable doubt, but there's a good chance he's convicted based on him acting shady afterwords. Instead of waiting for police to arrive he tries to ditch the knife and flee, and then lies to police multiple times.

This is an excellent observation.

They definitely overcharged and because of that he will be found Not Guilty. Why they didn't go for Manslaughter instead, I don't know. The fact remains that a dude going to the beach carrying a glock and a knife like he had was always going to be looking for a fight. It's demented as all fuck to carry not just one, but both deadly weapons with you for a trip to the beach. He has some serious issues and I believe that he's a danger to the public.

[raisedbywolves]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/us/ni...ing/index.html

Nicolae Miu, who was convicted of stabbing five people, one fatally, during a 2022 tubing excursion along the Apple River in Wisconsin, was sentenced to 20 years in prison Wednesday.

Miu, 54, was found guilty in April of first-degree reckless homicide in the death of 17-year-old Isaac Schuman. He was also convicted of battery and recklessly endangering safety with an aggravated factor of the use of a dangerous weapon in connection with the wounded victims: A.J. Martin, Dante Carlson, Tony Carlson and Rhyley Mattison.

“(Miu) left the scene, leaving his victims to die while casually floating past them and emergency workers as if nothing had happened,” St. Croix County District Judge R. Michael Waterman said while handing down the sentence, which came just after the two-year anniversary of the attack.

In addition to the 20-year prison sentence, Miu was sentenced to six years of extended supervision. He was given 732 days credit for time served. His defense attorney, Aaron Nelson, said Miu will be about 72 years old when he is eligible for release.

[Bewitchingstorm]

I am not sure how I feel about this. Part of me is happy he was convicted, but the other part of me is wondering if it was an unjust conviction.

[KimTisha]

I think it's an unjust conviction. I've watched the videos numerous times. Thirteen drunken teens against one middle-aged man in the water, a gang mentality took over. I think his lawyers did a crappy job, hopefully this can be overturned on ineffective assistance of counsel. Here's another side of the story that never came out at trial:

https://youtu.be/V5pLdFjeXyI?si=8bRxWt_7pRe9S8nc


P.S. I don't know where the info came that he had a Glock on the river (where, in his swim trunks??), but it wasn't brought up in the trial.

[Nic B]

What were they saying in the video? I don't have sound at work. Was this before or after he stabbed someone?

[KimTisha]

The kids were taunting him and calling him a pedophile and telling him to get away. They were really out of control, hooting and hollering. He was speaking very softly to them, plus he speaks with a Romanian accent and the teens were REALLY drunk. I don't think they understood him and in their drunken partying state did what stupid teens do - they made it up. "What?! Huh?! You want little girls?! GTF away from here!" He was looking for a cell phone, that's not disputed. Why would he go over there and say he's looking for young girls? It's absurd.

They talk about him having an opportunity to "walk away." It was all very chaotic. They were surrounding him, and there were several people in Miu's face at the same time. Arms were flailing, people are jumping back and forth, they were crowding him, screaming in his face. Voices behind him shouting and splashing water, he doesn't know if he's going to be hit from behind. They got him down in the water and tried to hold him down. He was way outnumbered and when he got up and someone struck he lashed out with the knife. Y'all know I fear open water and even though this wasn't deep, it was deep enough for 13 drunk teenagers to drown a middle-aged man. I would have been terrified, this case triggered me. Can ya tell?????

If I had 13 drunk, rowdy teens surrounding me in the water, pushing me down and trying to hold me down I would have pulled out the knife too. Now I know their intent. They got me down once, I'm not going to give them another chance. I don't know what the jury was thinking. He was clearly in danger, I have no doubt he reasonably believed his life was in danger. This was self-defense and these teens have learned nothing, I would be so ashamed if one of them was my child.

PS: Plus there's the whole immigrant escaping oppression mentality that most certainly contributed to Miu's less than forthright behavior in his initial contact with the police.