Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Killed a Teen: But was it self defense? - The Nicolae Miu story

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

This is the story of Nicolae Miu, the man who stabbed a teen at the Apple River in Wisconsin. He later tried to claim self defense.

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So the guy's name is Nikolai, and Nikolai's 54, he's living in Wisconsin, and one day it's summer, 2022. And Nikolai and his friends, they decide to get some inner tubes. and some alcohol and go float the local river. So they're like, sweet, let's go! And they drive out there, and they put their inner tubes in the water, and they float a while, and they're all drinking and having a good time. But then, suddenly, one of Nikolai's friends can't find his phone.

It seems to be lost. And so they look around a bit, but no luck. They can't find it. And they realize, oh, bro, you must have dropped it along the way, like as we were floating. And so Nikolai's a decent guy, and he wants to help him. his friend out and so he's like, well, I'll go find it. I got my goggles and my snorkel and I'll go back and look for it in the river where we were just at. And so Nikolai goes back away and he jumps in the

river and he's like searching around looking for this phone. And that's when he sees this group of teenagers across the river. And it looks like maybe they just found something. I think like maybe one of them just happened to be holding a phone up or something and Nikolai's like, oh, that must be the phone. But whatever the reason, he goes over to them to check it out. Now, These teenagers, they're partying, they're drunk, they're having a good time, they're being rowdy. And so when Nikolai, this awkward middle-aged man, comes over to them, they're understandably weirded out. They're like, what the f f*** who is this? And one of them starts filming him.

What is he on? Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Oh, shit. Oh, wow. Oh, God. He up.

He up. What are you talking about? Yeah! What the hell are you trying? I do it! Now, I don't know why, but Nikolai doesn't really say much to them. Like, he doesn't stop and explain that he's there, looking for his friend's phone. I don't know.

Maybe it's because he's drunk. I don't know. Regardless, the teens get irritated. They don't know who he is or why the hell he's there, so they start telling him to leave. Get away from us. What? What are you doing? And put on with your house.

And from here, things really start to escalate. Suddenly, a woman from another totally different separate group comes over and she she starts yelling at him to leave. Who is that? Who is that hell is this? Go! Then, for some reason, they start loudly accusing him of being a P3Dio. If he was looking for little girl.

You're looking for little girl. Yeah. That's a fucking what he says. We're not out. I didn't have that part on camera. Did I? Some young guys. What the hell is this guy's problem,

but, but Nikolai, he still isn't leaving. In fact, he is, He isn't saying much at all. Then the group of teens, they all start surrounding him. And there's like 13 of them, and they start taunting him. And Nikolai, he's getting nervous at this point. I mean, there's a lot of people around him yelling at him.

He's suddenly aware of how outnumbered he is. And so he does the only thing he can think of. He pulls a pocket knife out of his trunks. And if you pause the footage and zoom in, you can see the knife in his hand right here. However, the teens, they don't see the knife. And they keep yelling at him and they keep taunting him. And here is where shit gets crazy and violent. Now, what sets this violence off is actually in dispute.

The teens, they claim that Nikolai hits one of the girls in the group. I guess they say he punched her. But Nikolai says he didn't do that. And while someone is filming all this, unfortunately, the footage is too chaotic and you can't see it. Regardless of whether he hits someone or not, What we can see is how the teens react. And I'll slow down the footage for you so that we can talk about it.

So here you can see that they push Nikolai down and you can see him falling back into the water and then one of the teens runs up and boom slaps him, but I can't show you that part. It's too violent for this app so we'll skip past it. Then Nikolai tries to get up and you can see this guy push him back down again and then the guy comes back to push him another time. Now if I pause the video here, you can't see see it because of the resolution, but Nikolai still has that knife in his hand. And I can't show you, but he goes ahead and he stabs the guy who pushed him right in the stomach.

Now at this point, most of the teens don't seem to realize that their friend was stabbed, and they continue to surround Nikolai and touch him. He hit a woman? He hit a woman? You're a woman. And then, unfortunately, the camera pans away, so we don't actually have footage of this next part. And I'll just explain it to you. So one of the teens, his name is Isaac, and he's 17.

And I guess Isaac tries to intervene and he touches Nikolai in some way, maybe aggressive, maybe not, I don't know, and Nikolai takes the knife and boom, he stabs Isaac right in the chest. And then he just keeps swinging that knife around and pow, he cuts another kid. And bam, he slices another kid. And all this happens so fast that most of them don't realize that people are getting stabbed. Until. Suddenly, the group starts to see all the blood floating in the water and they start freaking out. What the fuck?

He's going to die. He's dying. He's diabeau for him, man. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. And he goes back to his group all nonchalant and his group is like, where were you? What happened?

And Nikolai's like, nah, nothing. And the group's like, nah, nothing. And the group's like, all right, and they just continue floating down the river. Meanwhile, Isaac, the kid who got stabbed in the chest, he dies. And the group of teens, they're obviously still freaking out, and they've already called 911. And so pretty quickly, police arrive, and the teens tell them what happened, and they get a description of the stabber.

And so police, they're looking around for this stabber, and they happen to see Nikolai with his group. And he's wearing the same swim trunks that the teens describe the stabber is wearing, And so police know that Nikolai is the one who stabbed Isaac. So right now you're being placed under arrest, okay? You're being in place under arrest for a homicide and attempted homicide. And so bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. A man fighting with a group of teens,

tubing on a river pulls a knife, killing a 17-year-old. He claimed it was self-defense. And so officers, they sit Nikolai down to question him about all this. And this is where he really screws up. He doesn't ask for a lawyer. Instead, he just sits down and he starts telling police what happened. All of a sudden, they were like, whoops, around me, and they were attacking me from all their directions. And I truly, truly feared for my life.

And so, yeah, he's claiming self-defense, which there is an argument to be made that he was acting in self-defense, although his lawyer should be making this argument, not him. And to make it worse, at this point, Nikolai doesn't realize that one of the teens' recorded video of the whole fight. and that police actually have that video. So for whatever reason, he starts lying to them, claiming that the teens pulled knives on him. There are lots of people that came on to me. Self-defense, they produced two weapons,

one I took from them. And I don't know who that kid was, but he produced he had a knife on him. And then there was another knife, a longer knife, it looked like a kitchen knife. When the kid attacked me, I took that from him. As soon as he came, with a knife, I grabbed a knife from him.

And what I did, then I grabbed, twisted his arm and poked him with his own knife. Then I took it from him and I started swinging. And so eventually, Nikolai goes to trial. And the fact that he lied to police about the teens pulling knives on him comes up. In fact, everything he lied about comes up. And so the jury finds out he lied and they no longer find him credible and they don't believe him about anything. and they end up finding him guilty of first-degree reckless homicide. And he's sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The man who killed a teenager on the Apple River will now spend the next 20 years in prison. That is wild. Always get a lawyer.