Day 4 of Nicolae Miu's Apple River stabbing trial focuses on bodycam footage
HUDSON, Wis. — Day four of Nicolae Miu's trial for the deadly stabbing on the Apple River in Wisconsin has concluded. Miu, of Prior Lake, Minnesota, is accused of killing 17-year-old Isaac Schuman and injuring four others on July 30, 2022.
The prosecution aims to prove that Miu, 54, was the aggressor. The defense is arguing Miu stabbed the five people in self-defense.
CONTENT WARNING: This post contains an image and descriptions of the stabbing that some may find disturbing.
Janell Duxbury testifies
Thursday's testimony began with Janell Duxbury, who said she saw Miu stab one of her friends, Ryhley Mattison, on the river.
"I thought it was a little punch towards her ribs and until he had removed his hand, I saw the knife come out of my friend's side," Duxbury said.
Duxbury says she didn't pay too much attention to Miu after that because she was preoccupied with helping her friend. She said she also helped others drag A.J. Martin, who had been disemboweled in the stabbings, to the riverbank.
Duxbury was part of the Carlson group, which was one of three groups of people involved in the stabbings.
Duxbury said that in the moments before the stabbings, Miu didn't look aggressive, but he looked "very expressionless" and "hollow."
"Almost like a demonic look in his face," she said. "I don't know how else to describe it other than his eyes did not look human — very daunting."
Both Mattison and Martin testified on Wednesday.
Andrea Baldazo testifies
The second witness of the day was Andrea Baldazos. She was on the river that day with her husband, her three teenage children, a group of friends and her husband's cousin.
Baldazo, a nurse who has worked in an emergency room, said her group was tubing down the river when her husband pointed out the commotion on the river. When she looked, she saw a person lying down on the river's edge and another person further down.
"People were, what I thought was laughing, turned into screaming, yelling," she said.
At that point, she said she knew someone was hurt so she got out of her tube and rushed to Schuman, who was lying on his back on the riverbank.
"He was not breathing, so I started chest compressions right away and continued that for a long time," she said.
Baldazo said at first she thought Schuman might have been impaled by the set of roots and branches that were hanging down just prior to his location on the riverbank, but then noticed a "slash mark" on his left upper chest.
"It felt like forever that we were doing compressions," she said.
Meanwhile, Baldazo said she kept asking why the ambulance hadn't arrived yet. At one point, when she was relieved by another person doing compressions, she checked on the others who were stabbed but saw that they were "up and speaking and conscious," so she went back to Schuman.
Baldazo stayed with Schuman until the ambulance arrived.
911 recordings
Terry Andersen, emergency communications manager for St. Croix County in Wisconsin, took the stand as the third witness on Thursday.
Andersen said the first 911 call for the stabbings came in at 3:47 p.m. on July 30. Gabriella Khazraeinazmpour, who testified Wednesday, was the first of many to call 911.
Recordings of the 911 calls were played in court. In one recording, a person can be heard saying "somebody pulled a knife on our friend." Much of the audio is tough to decipher, due to the commotion in the background.
Andersen said, due to the amount of 911 calls coming in, dispatchers had to work to get as much information as they could from each caller and move on to the next.
There were 11 separate 911 calls concerning the stabbing.
John Ferrell testifies
John Ferrell, a sergeant with the Somerset Police Department and licensed emergency medical responder, took to the stand as the fourth witness on Thursday.
Ferrell said he responded to the scene and when he arrived, he observed multiple stabbing victims. He had his body camera activated.
Footage of the body cam was shown in court, beginning with Ferrell driving to the scene. It showed that he arrived at 3:54 p.m., which was seven minutes after the first 911 call.
In the footage, people are seen walking up the riverbank, some crying and others yelling that people have been stabbed.
Ferrell said he assisted in carrying Mattison up the riverbank. He then grabbed his medical equipment from his squad car and provided it to the officers treating Mattison and another stabbing victim. At that point, Ferrell said he went back to the river to look for more victims.
Only audio can be heard for much of the body camera footage, since the court camera was not trained on the video.
One person can be heard saying that one of the victims "is probably already dead" and that the suspect still has the knife and was walking up the river.
After walking up the river, Ferrell said he began assisting with CPR on Schuman. Later, a backboard was placed on inner tubes and they moved Schuman down the river to get him to an ambulance.
Chase Durand testifies
The prosecution next called Chase Durand, a patrol sergeant with St. Croix County who responded to the scene on the day of the stabbing.
Durand, who has roughly a decade of law enforcement experience, said he was about 9 miles away when he first got the call about the stabbings, and rushed to the scene.
When he arrived, he said he saw a man with a stab wound near a bridge, and was directed by Ferrell towards a woman in an inner tube, who had also been stabbed. He hadn't turned on his body camera during that time, so the early moments after his arrival were not captured on tape. He said he helped the woman get out of the water and then turned on his camera.
The prosecution played the body camera footage. It starts with Durand in the water, approaching the group helping Martin, whose stomach was cut open by Miu. The scene was chaotic: a woman was encouraging Martin while a first responder helped him, and a man in a yellow shirt approached Durand to describe what Miu looked like.
Durand testified that his role that day was to coordinate a response to the incident. In much of the video, he is speaking to dispatchers, describing the scene around him and relaying information.
Levi Stumo testifies
Former Somerset police officer Levi Stumo's testimony mostly consisted of the prosecution playing his body camera footage from the day of the stabbings.
In the footage, Stumo approaches the river while several others are leaving it, about 10 minutes after the initial 911 call. As he heads upriver, someone tells him there is a victim whose "guts are exposed." Stumo uses his radio to report a "significant stabbing."
Stumo testified he also participated in the search for the stabbing suspect. When the defense asked if he was aware of reports of a citizen with a baseball bat looking for the suspect, he said he did "not recall at this time."
Stumo agreed with the defense's assertion that Miu was compliant during his arrest.
Benjamin Trebian testifies
St. Croix County deputy Benjamin Trebian's testimony offered the jury the first look at Miu's arrest.
Trebian's body camera footage, played in court, showed Miu in handcuffs. Officers can be heard verifying he matched the description of the suspect.
Trebian testified that he was given a photo of the suspect in trunks during the search, and when Miu was arrested he was wearing a shirt, hat and glasses, as well.
Miu also had "cuts and nicks on knuckles and on his hands," Trebian said.
The defense asked if Trebian knew what Miu was wearing at the beginning of the day, and he said he did not. Miu's attorneys also asked if the marks on Miu's hands were consistent with falling in a river, to which Trebian replied, "Potentially."
Trebian also told the defense he "didn't notice any signs" of intoxication in his interactions with Miu. He told the prosecution Miu was "kind of in a trance-like state almost."
Video objections and Mitch Thomason testifies
Before the next witness, the judge excused the jury to deal with the defense's objection to a portion of body camera footage the prosecution intended to play.
Said footage showed officers informing Miu of the reason for his arrest and saying he would meet with an investigator, followed by Miu responding, "OK." The defense objected to the relevancy of Miu's response, and also said it was a Miranda violation.
The judge ruled the video could be played, but must be stopped after the officer informed Miu of the reason for his arrest. His response will be excluded.
St. Croix County Mitch Thomason, who has more than 20 years of law enforcement experience, then took the stand.
Thomason was not working on July 30, 2022, he said, but responded after being informed the SWAT team was being called in. He said he stopped at the sheriff's office to get a drone, then responded to the scene in uniform and carrying his sidearm.
As he approached the scene, a group of people passed him, he told the court. Thomason, who had seen a picture of the suspect, clocked a man wearing a long-sleeved button-up, hat and glasses as "odd," but did not stop the man. Shortly after, someone identified that man — Miu — as the suspect.
"Behind me I heard someone yell, 'That was the person,'" Thomason said.
The prosecution asked Thomason if Miu made any attempt to flag Thomason down, to which Thomason said no.
Thomason said the person who identified Miu as the suspect was "a citizen with a baseball bat," but that he didn't attack the suspect, "just pointed."
The prosecution then played a body cam clip in which Thomason told Miu he was under arrest for "homicide and attempted homicide." This was the clip to which the defense objected.
The defense asked how far Thomason was from Miu when he passed him — about 8-10 feet, he said — and whether his pace matched that of the rest of the group. Thomason said it did.
The defense also hammered the point that Thomason, despite thinking the man passing him matched the suspect description, let him walk by. Thomason said he knew other law enforcement officers were behind him and was content to let them deal with him while he went ahead to search for other possible suspects.
Thomason testified Miu was compliant during his arrest and did not smell of alcohol, though he added that was "not a detail that I was concerned about or something I was a part of at that point."
The defense then asked about the citizen with a baseball bat. Thomason said he was just "standing and pointing," not approaching Miu.
Miu's attorneys then played body cam footage in which Thomason was heard saying, "The guy with the baseball bat was just responding to the sighting."
The court then called for a lunch break.
Scott Knudson testifies
St. Croix County Sheriff Scott Knudson gave a brief testimony after lunch on Thursday, clarifying that he was not aware of earlier testimony that the sheriff's office was offered photo evidence of Madison Cohen's alleged injury.
He also testified that Miu had no signs of intoxication.
Knife shown in court
Mitchell Schaeppi, an investigator for the St. Croix County Sheriff's Office testified that he found the knife used in the stabbing on the river ledge, on a "muddy section of a shoreline." The knife was closed, he said.
Schaeppi opened a box containing the knife and showed it to the courtroom, entering it as evidence into the trial.
Then the topic of his testimony shifted; he said met previously with Cohen and her mother, and Cohen had said there was a photo of her alleged injury on her phone, but had since deleted it. Schaeppi reviewed downloaded forensic evidence of the phone and found no photos of Cohen's injuries.
Charles Coleman
St. Croix County investigator Charles Coleman served as a scene setter on the witness stand.
While Coleman testified, the prosecution showed drone footage and virtual recreations of the location on the Apple River where the stabbings occurred. The recreations were created using infrared laser beams and panoramic photos, Coleman said. The prosecution used the images to establish distances between the groups involved, as well as relative positions.
The prosecution also presented a measurement of the water depth on the river, which Coleman said was taken on Sept. 1, 2022, more than a month after the stabbings. The defense pointed out that river depths fluctuate, and in particular, asked Coleman if the depth of the Apple River typically goes down between July 30 and the end of August. He agreed, and testified that he did no analysis to determine the depth as it would have been on July 30, 2022.
The defense also attempted to poke holes in Coleman's analysis, making the point that "human choice" played a role in his measurements and modeling. He agreed with that assessment.
Miu's attorneys also tried to make the point that Schuman's group pursued Miu, but Coleman said he could not determine this.
"I just know they ended up at the same location, I don't know who followed who," Coleman said.
Final witnesses
The final two witnesses of the day were detective Carlos de la Cruz of the New Richmond Police Department and Sally Nichols, a certified interpreter. The prosecution established de la Cruz interviewed Spanish-speaking witnesses, and Nichols transcribed and translated 911 calls and body camera footage.
Court is in recess until Friday morning.
Day 3 recap
On Wednesday, a few of those hurt in the stabbing took the stand, including Martin, who suffered the most serious injuries of the four survivors. Martin said when he approached the chaos on the river, he sought to stop the altercation, citing his experience breaking up fights while working at elementary schools.
He said he was trying to keep Miu down in the water before Miu reached up and "got me with the knife." Martin showed the court the significant scar on his abdomen.
"The most apparent thing obviously was that my stomach was open and my intestines were in my hands," Martin said.
Martin told Anderson he remembered waking up in the hospital with a breathing tube installed and his parents looking at him. He said he spent 27 days in hospital, losing 50 pounds during his stay.
Miu's ex-wife, Sondra, also testified on Wednesday. She testified that she was on the water that day with her then-husband and friends. She said that Miu went out to look for a missing cell phone. She looked up from her tube and "all of a sudden I saw him on his hands and knees in the water and somebody was hitting him," she said.
MORE: Day 2 of Nicolae Miu's Apple River stabbing trial features emotional testimony from Isaac Schuman's mom, friends
Since the stabbing, she testified that Nicolae Miu had expressed frustration towards her for not hearing his calls for help. Sandi Miu said she wears hearing aids, and wasn't wearing them on the water that day. The water was loud and she couldn't hear him.
She said she'd seen him use his utility knife back at home. Nicolae Miu also wasn't a frequent drinker, and she wasn't concerned about his intoxication level on the day of the stabbing.
A second video of the stabbing was also introduced when Larrion Davis, 24, took the stand. He was on the river that day with his friends. He was taking a video of himself and managed to capture some moments of the stabbing.
The video itself, he said, was blurry because it was a Snapchat video, and he transferred it from his iPhone to a police officer's Android. His phone was damaged by the water that day, and was unable to retrieve the entirety of the video.
RELATED: Video of deadly fight that led to Apple River stabbing shown during opening arguments of Nicolae Miu trial
"I saw him stab the light-skinned dude before and slice his whole stomach open, and you could see him like push the next person in that video, but it's real blurry, that's pretty much it," he said.
After the stabbing, Davis said his group helped a girl who was stabbed, and another man who was stabbed in his arm.
The defense has been keen to point out that a number of the victims who were tubing and were involved in the incident were intoxicated and some were also high on marijuana, which is going to be an important point for the jury to consider in the credibility of the witnesses and their ability to recall accurate facts.
The prosecution is expected to call to the stand 44 witnesses over the course of the trial.
WCCO will have live coverage throughout the trial which you can watch in the video player above, via CBS News Minnesota, Pluto TV or the CBS News app on your phone or connected TV.
