Nicolae Miu is in court in Hudson where he faces sentencing for fatally stabbing 17-year-old Isaac Schuman of Stillwater and injuring four other tubers during a confrontation on western Wisconsin’s Apple River in 2022.

St. Croix County Circuit Court Judge R. Michael Waterman will hand down the sentence to the 54-year-old Prior Lake man after statements from his victims’ family members. Miu, who claimed he acted in self-defense, faced up to 96 years in prison if sentenced consecutively.

Schuman’s mother Alina Hernandez was the first person to give her victim-impact statement. Miu, dressed in an orange jail-issued jumpsuit, kept his eyes closed during most of her statement.

“My world was devastated, my heart forever shattered,” she said. “He was an amazing son and a mother’s dream. Isaac was kind, sensitive, smart, giving, helpful, talented, selfless … and a very agreeable child.”

Schuman loved his girlfriend, Alyssa; listening to music and being the DJ at events for friends and family, she said.

He also loved playing golf and had ordered a new set of clubs before his death. “He was so excited for his new golf clubs that were on order,” she said. “He was waiting for them to come in. He never got to see them or golf with them. … Picking them up was heartbreaking.”

Schumann was supposed to play golf on July 30, 2022, but went tubing on the Apple River instead because the friend he was supposed to play with had to work.

Hernandez testified at Miu’s trial that she was drinking coffee on the deck of the family’s Stillwater home when her son told her his new plans. She told him she was hoping he’d pick up his dad from the airport later.

“I regret allowing him to go to the river every single day and not allowing him to pick his dad up from the airport,” she said.

At 15, Schuman got a job at the car wash and started a business detailing boats, designed his own website and was driven to be an entrepreneur, she said.

“He didn’t get to graduate from high school and graduate from college and start a family,” she said. “Isaac was my favorite human, and not just because he was my son. He died a hero. Isaac was senselessly murdered and died terrified. The last thing he saw was blood and guts, and he tried to help.”

“He stole Isaac’s life and stole my life,” she said. “Losing Issac, my baby, has devastated me and shattered my heart. Issac didn’t die in an accident, Issac died by an evil monster. I would do anything to have him back. I miss his texts and his voice and homemade cards telling me I was the best mom.”

Sadly, she said, Schuman couldn’t be an organ donor – they wanted to “use his beautiful blue eyes and bone and tissue” – but “he didn’t have enough blood.”

She asked Waterman to sentence Miu to the fullest.

“I hope that monster suffers as much as I do every day until he gets to hell,” she said. “He has no remorse, and he plays the victim. It makes me nauseous. He has no soul.”

A jury in April convicted Miu of first-degree homicide and five other charges for the July 30, 2022, deadly confrontation, which began as he waded through the shallow river in Somerset looking for a friend’s lost cellphone.

Miu, a former mechanical engineer who emigrated to Minnesota from Romania as a young teen, testified during his trial that he feared for his life when he stabbed Schuman in the chest and seriously injured Ryhley Mattison, then 24, of Burnsville; A.J. Martin, then 22, of Elk River; and brothers Dante Carlson and Tony Carlson, both in their early 20s, of Luck, Wis. Schuman bled to death.

The trial drew high interest from across the U.S., in part because it was live-streamed by media outlets, which broadcast cellphone video showing portions of the confrontation at the popular recreation area.

Miu’s attorneys tried to portray a scene in which Miu was surrounded by a drunken, angry mob who called him a “pedophile” and “raper” and attacked him. Miu said he was carrying a snorkel and goggles while looking for the cellphone, which he said had been a waterproof floating bag, and that he pulled his pocketknife from his swim trunks because he was being “attacked” and “feared for my life.”

Prosecutors argued Miu had opportunities to walk away despite taunts from the teens, and that it turned violent after he became angry and punched Madison Coen, who was part of the Carlson brothers’ group. Dante Carlson then punched Miu, causing him to fall into the shallow water, where he was pushed several times.

Within 25 seconds, Miu stabbed Martin, Mattison and Tony Carlson — all of them once in the torso — and Dante Carlson twice, also in the torso. Miu stabbed Schuman in the chest with great force, cutting through two ribs and slicing his heart.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys relied heavily on cellphone video taken by Schuman’s friend Jawahn Cockfield. One is 9 seconds long, shortly after Miu ran up to the five teens while he was looking for the lost phone, the other a 3½-minute recording that shows much of the confrontation and its frantic aftermath.

Jurors deliberated for about six hours over two days before finding Miu guilty on April 11 of first-degree reckless homicide, four counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety with a dangerous weapon and one for misdemeanor battery with use of a dangerous weapon.

Jurors could not agree on the most serious charges against Miu: first-degree intentional homicide, which carried a potential life sentence, and four counts of attempted intentional first-degree homicide. When they didn’t find him guilty of those counts, they moved to the lesser charges that prosecutors added a day before closing arguments.

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