A 52-year-old Minnesota man was charged Monday with killing a teenager and stabbing four others at a popular Wisconsin summer spot in a standoff with a breakaway group that the man said began while he was looking for a river in the river lost phone
The man, Nicolae Miu, of Prior Lake, Minn., was charged with first-degree intentional homicide in Saturday’s slaying of the teenager, identified by his family as 17-year-old Isaac Schuman of Stillwater, Minn. . Mr. Miu also faces four counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, a felony, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in St. Louis County Circuit Court. Croix, Wisconsin.
The complaint described a bloody scene in which Mr. Miu “waved” a knife at a group of youths during a dispute on the Apple River, a tributary of the St. Croix, which is frequented by tubers and campers visiting from the surrounding area. St. Paul and Minneapolis.
According to the documents, Mr. Miu, described in the complaint as “a large male” with gray hair, weighing approximately 250 pounds, was captured on video running toward a group shirtless and carrying a snorkel light. In the video, the group can be heard telling him to “run,” according to the documents.
According to interviews with witnesses and victims, Mr. Miu was “shaping a group of minors with her pipes.” Members of that group “were yelling for help to other individuals floating in the nearby river,” according to the documents.
Witnesses said a group of people came and stood between Mr Miu and the children and told him to leave. They also said he punched or slapped a woman in the second group who confronted him. According to witnesses, Mr. Miu was then punched by a man and fell into the river, the documents said.
Mr. Miu then began “stabbing several people who were near him,” according to the complaint. They described the knife as having a three-inch silver blade. After the stabbing, “there was enough blood in the river that the water turned red in places,” court documents say.
Authorities have not released the names of the victims. The teenager was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital. The other four victims were in stable condition, authorities said.
In an interview with authorities, Mr Miu claimed he was acting in self-defense and had 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 teenager’s family described him as an honor student looking forward to his senior year at Stillwater High School. They said he hoped to pursue a degree in electrical engineering and in his senior year had started a car and boat detailing business.
“Isaac walked into every room with a big smile, an infectiously positive aura 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 devastated.”
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, Minn., Sheriff Scott Knudson of the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday. Croix in a statement.
On a GoFundMe page, Ryhley Mattison said she was among those injured in the attack.
Nicolae Miu, 52, of Prior Lake, Minn., was charged with killing a 17-year-old boy and stabbing four others at a river tubing site in Somerset, Wis.Credit …St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office
Deputies waded about 100 yards through waist-deep water to reach the victims, who were also assisted by others in the river and emergency medical workers, Sheriff Knudson said. Mr. Miu had left the scene and was arrested at a tuber exit point, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Mr. Miu was with a group of friends, including his wife, Sondra Dee Miu, according to the documents. She told authorities that she and her husband had arrived at the river around 10:45 a.m. and that at some point she had left the group to try to find “a phone of a member of her parties that got lost “.
Mrs. Miu told authorities that while her husband was looking for the phone, a group of men came down from the tubes and began beating Mr. Miu, and that two members of his party had run up to Mr. Miu and the men who were fighting Ms Miu said “all she heard was screams” and did not see what happened, the documents say.
He told the authorities that Mr. Miu had a knife in his pocket that was not very large. “Those boys took him,” she said, adding that her husband had told her that a group of people “were calling him a pedophile and had attacked him.”
After the stabbing, he ran back upstream and into the woods, according to the complaint. Authorities arrested him after receiving reports around 4:45 p.m. that witnesses had seen him, the documents say.
Jeremiah Harrelson, a public defender who represented Mr. At Monday’s hearing, Miu said he could not comment further on the case as he was no longer representing him.
In an interview with Brandie Hart, Lt. of the County Sheriff’s Office of St. Croix, Mr Miu said he worked as a mechanical engineer, had a degree in engineering and mathematics and had “never been in trouble with the law”. before.”
He said his actions were an act of “self-defence” and that he had been searching for a lost mobile phone which he believed was inside a “float”, one of the bags provided to the Tubers to prevent items from value sink.
The group, he said, had insulted him for being in the water with his snorkel gear, calling him a “child abuser”.
“They attacked me,” he told Lt. Hart, according to the complaint. “It all happened so fast.”
A preliminary hearing has been set for August 12.
Vimal Patel contributed to the report.