Watch live: More witness testimony underway in day 4 of Nicolae Miu’s Apple River stabbing trial

HUDSON, Wis. — Day four of Nicolae Miu’s trial for the deadly stabbing on the Apple River in Wisconsin resumes Thursday morning. 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.  

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.

Cole Premo

Cole Premo is a web producer at WCCO.com. For more than a decade, he’s been covering breaking news and weather, daily topics, stories from the Native community and more in Minnesota.