A Prior Lake man claiming self-defense for a stabbing attack in a western Wisconsin river that killed a Stillwater teenager and injured four others has retained the attorney who defended Kyle Rittenhouse, acquitted of killing two people last summer during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wis.
Nicolae Miu, 52, appeared via remote video for the brief hearing and told the court he had secured Corey Chirafisi, a Madison attorney who secured not-guilty verdicts for Rittenhouse on all charges of a jury in November after testifying that he acted on his own. -defense. The case fueled the national debate about guns, vigilantism and racial injustice.
When questioned by law enforcement after Saturday’s Apple River encounter, Miu said he acted in self-defense as several people walked towards him as he searched for a cellphone that a friend had lost. He said some of them “produced two guns”, punched him and got on top of him at one point while calling him a child molester.
Miu remains jailed in lieu of $1 million cash bond. He was charged Monday in St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson with first-degree homicide and four counts of attempted first-degree homicide in connection with the killing of 17-year-old Isaac Schuman and wounding four others in their twenties. Miu is due back in court next Friday for a follow-up hearing.
Rittenhouse has been charged with homicide, attempted homicide and reckless endangerment for killing two men and wounding a third with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle in the summer of 2020 during a tumultuous night of protests against the murder of a black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha policeman.
Rittenhouse, then a 17-year-old former police cadet, said he traveled to Kenosha to protect his property from rioters, but was attacked and feared for his life. He’s white, like those he killed.
Rittenhouse could have been sentenced to life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge, first-degree intentional homicide. Two other charges each carry more than 60 years behind bars.
On Saturday afternoon near Somerset, Wis., the victims and Miu were all descending the river around 3:45 p.m. when the encounter happened just up the highway. Bridge 35/64, near the Minnesota border and northeast of Stillwater.
A key piece of evidence in the case is a video recorded by a man in a tuber group in his twenties, some of whom pushed Miu and accused him of looking for underage girls, the charges allege. After a few minutes, Miu killed Schuman with a stab in his upper abdomen before stabbing or slashing the others, according to the charges.
Rhyley Mattison was one of four who survived the dagger. The attack kept her at Regions Hospital in St. Paul for nearly a week as she recovers from a punctured lung and injured diaphragm.
The 24-year-old from the Twin Cities said she was among a dozen friends relaxing by the river last weekend when they stepped in on behalf of a younger group which alleged that Miu made sexually suggestive comments.
“My friend said [to Miu] he needed to go, he needed to go,” Mattison recalled. “He ended up punching her in the face.
Mattison, acknowledging she had been drinking, continued, “Maybe I yelled at him or hit him back.”
She remembered being in the water below her waist, and “he was just standing there, looking at me, and he lunged at me. I felt like he gave me a punch in the side. I looked down and was bleeding.”
Mattison recalls not knowing what to do, and “everything else was a blur. I got pushed into the river a bit. The cops pulled me out of the river and they put me down until the ambulance.”
Miu’s self-defense claims are unconvincing to Mattison, explaining that while “we may have been wrong to confront him…everything he did was horrible. Punching my friend in the face then stab me, it’s ridiculous.”
Of the three other stab survivors, Mattison said two brothers from Luck, Wis., left hospital earlier in the week, but another friend is still in Regions and may need further surgery.
The entire episode left Mattison reluctant to socialize in a group setting anytime soon and vowed never to tubing the Apple River again, which has long been a major summer attraction for Twin Cities residents.
“Honestly, I’m a little nervous,” said Mattison, who is between jobs and is relying on a GoFundMe campaign to make ends meet. “I know I have to live my life. Obviously I’m not going to hide in my house, but I’m definitely going to be more careful with where I go and what I do.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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