A 52-year-old Minnesota man was charged Monday with killing a teen and stabbing four other people at a popular Wisconsin summer tubing spot in a confrontation with a segregated group that, the man says, began when he scoured the river. to a phone.
The man, Nicolae Miu, of Prior Lake, Minnesota, was charged with first-degree murder in the Saturday murder of the teen identified by his family as 17-year-old Isaac Schuman of Stillwater, Minn. mr. Miu also faces four charges of attempted first-degree murder, a felony, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in the Circuit Court of St. Croix County, Wisconsin.
The complaint described a bloody scene in which Mr. Miu “waved” a knife at a group of young people during a dispute on the Apple River, a tributary of the St. Croix River, which is frequented by tubers and campers who come from near St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Mr Miu – described in the complaint as “an elderly man” with gray hair, weighing about 250 pounds – was caught on video, according to the documents, running shirtless to a group and wearing a snorkel. The video shows the group telling him to “go away,” according to the documents.
According to interviews with witnesses and victims, Mr Miu “harassed a group of young people on their tubes”. Members of this group “screamed for help from other individuals floating nearby in the river,” the documents said.
Witnesses said a group of people came between Mr. Miu and the youths and told him to leave. They also said he punched or punched a woman in the second group who confronted him. According to witnesses, Mr Miu was then beaten by a man and fell into the river, documents say.
Mr Miu then began stabbing “several persons who were near him,” according to the indictment. They described the knife as a three-inch silver blade. After the stabbing, “there was enough blood in the river that the water took on a red tint in places,” court documents say.
Authorities have not released the names of the victims. The teen was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital. The four other victims are in stable condition, authorities said.
In an interview with authorities, Mr. Miu that he acted in self-defense and that he initially approached the group because he was looking for a lost phone and thought one of them might have found it.
In a statement, the teen’s family described him as a honors roll student looking forward to his senior year at Stillwater High School. They said he had hoped to earn a degree in electrical engineering and had started an auto and boat detailing business in the past year.
“Isaac entered every room with a big smile, an infectious positive vibe, and lifted everyone around him,” his family said in the statement. “He had an incredibly bright future ahead of him and we are all heartbroken and heartbroken.”
The injured were described as two men, ages 20 and 22, from Luck, Wisconsin; a woman, 24, of Burnsville, Minn.; and a 22-year-old man from Elk River, Minnesota, St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office Sheriff Scott Knudson said in a statement Sunday.
On a GoFundMe page, Ryhley Mattison said she was one of those injured in the attack.
Deputies waded about 100 yards through deep water to reach the victims, who were also assisted by others in the river and medical workers, Sheriff Knudson said. Mr Miu had left the scene and was taken into custody at a tuber exit, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
According to documents, Mr Miu was with a group of friends, including his wife, Sondra Dee Miu. She told authorities that she and her husband had arrived at the river at around 10:45 am and that he had left their group at one point to try to “find a lost phone belonging to their party”.
Ms. Miu told authorities that while her husband was searching for the phone, a group of men got out of their tube and started beating Mr. Miu, and that two members of her party ran to Mr. Miu and the men. to fight. Ms. Miu said “all she heard was screaming” and she didn’t see what was happening, documents say.
She told authorities that Mr. Miu had a knife in his pocket that was not very large. “Those guys took it from him,” she said, adding that her husband had told her that a group of people “called him a pedophile and attacked him.”
After the stabbing, he ran back upstream and entered the forest, the complaint said. Authorities arrested him after receiving reports at about 4:45 p.m. that witnesses had seen him, documents say.
Jeremiah Harrelson, a public defender representing Mr Miu at Monday’s hearing, said he was unable to comment further on the case as he no longer represented him.
In an interview with Brandie Hart, a lieutenant with the St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office, Mr. Miu that he worked as a mechanical engineer, had bachelor’s degrees in engineering and mathematics, and that he “had never encountered the law before.”
He said his actions were an act of “self-defense” and that he was looking for a lost cell phone that he believed was in a “floater” – one of the bags provided to tubers to keep valuables from sinking. .
The group, he said, had insulted him for being in the water with his snorkel gear, calling him a “child molester.”
“They attacked me,” he said to Lieutenant Hart, according to the indictment. “Everything went so fast.”
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for August 12.
Vimal Patel reporting contributed.
