Greek-American Alek Skarlatos and
another two US citizens who overpowered a gunman on a train between
Amsterdam and Paris on Friday were invited to the Elysee Palace by
French President Francois Hollande on Saturday and praised by President
Barack Obama as heroes.
Skarlatos, a 22-year-old member of the Oregon National Guard who had
recently returned from service in Afghanistan, said he and two friends,
another army officer, Spencer Stone, and Anthony Sadler, a student, had
been on the train when they saw a man enter holding a Kalashnikov.
Stone tackled the gunman but was cut with a knife.
The friends then disarmed the suspect, beat him until he was unconscious and bound him.
France train attack: Americans overpower gunman on Paris express
Police investigate incident near Arras, France, in which three US
citizens – two of them soldiers – prevented attack by suspect reportedly
armed with AK-47
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French
interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve praises the brave actions of two
train passengers who reportedly helped overpower the gunman - link to video
A heavily armed gunman has opened fire on a high-speed train
travelling from Amsterdam to Paris before being overpowered by three US
citizens, two of whom were soldiers.
Two people were injured in the attack, including one of the
Americans, who was admitted to hospital with serious injuries to his
hand that needed surgery.
Barack Obama described the men as heroic following the attack on Friday.
Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Briton Chris Norman after the attack on the train. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
A British passenger, Chris Norman, helped the Americans tie up the
suspect, and French anti-terrorist police are now questioning him. He
was arrested after the train made an emergency stop at Arras, near the
French-Belgian border.
The suspect’s motive was not immediately known, but French
prosecutors said counter-terrorism investigators were launching an
inquiry. According to early briefings, the gunman, 26, was known to
French intelligence services and was Moroccan or of Moroccan origin.
Belgian prosecutors said on Saturday they had formally opened an
anti-terrorism investigation. “We have opened an inquiry as the suspect
boarded the train in Brussels,” Eric van der Sypt, a spokesman for the
prosecutor’s office, said.
The shooting happened just before 6pm in the last carriage of the
train, which was carrying 554 passengers. The man had several weapons in
his luggage, including a Kalashnikov, an automatic pistol and razor
blades.
Two of the Americans were in the military, their travelling companion
and childhood friend Anthony Sadler, a senior at Sacramento State
University, said.
The one injured was named as air force serviceman Spencer Stone from
Sacramento, California. The other was Alek Skarlatos, of Roseburg,
Oregon.
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“We
heard a gunshot and we heard glass breaking behind us and saw a train
employee sprint past us down the aisle,” Sadler said. The trio then saw a
gunman entering the carriage with an automatic rifle, he added.
“As he was cocking it to shoot it, Alek just yells: ‘Spencer, go!’
and Spencer runs down the aisle,” Sadler said. “Spencer makes first
contact, he tackles the guy, Alek wrestles the gun away from him, and
the gunman pulls out a box cutter and slices Spencer a few times. And
the three of us beat him until he was unconscious.”
Sadler later told AFP the gunman had demanded his weapon back. He
said: “He was just telling us to give back his gun. ‘Give me back my
gun! Give me back my gun!’ But we just carried on beating him up and
immobilised him and that was it.
“I’m just a college student. I came to see my friends for my first trip to Europe and we stop a terrorist. It’s kind of crazy.”
Skarlatos, who had recently returned from a tour of duty in
Afghanistan with the national guard, told Sky News the gunman’s AK-47
had jammed and that he had not known how to fix it.
“If that guy’s weapon had been functioning properly, I don’t even
want to think about how it would have went,” he said. “We just did what
we had to do. You either run away or fight. We chose to fight and got
lucky and didn’t die.”
Norman helped tie the gunman up while Stone helped another passenger who had been wounded in the throat and was losing blood.
US soldiers restrain Paris train attacker
“I just applaud my friends for being on point,” Sadler told Sky News.
“If Alek didn’t yell ‘Go!’ and Spencer didn’t get up straight away, who
knows how many people he would have shot.”
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Norman, a 62-year-old consultant who lives in France, sad he had initially ducked down in his seat when he saw the man enter the carriage carrying a gun.
“I came in at the end and I guess just helped get the guy under
control at the end of it all,” he told French reporters. “We ended up by
tying him up, then during the process the guy actually pulled out a
cutter and starting cutting Spencer.
“He cut Spencer behind the neck, he nearly cut his thumb off too.
Spencer held him and we eventually got him under control. He went
unconscious, I think.”
The French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who appeared in the 1986 cult
film Betty Blue with Beatrice Dalle, was also lightly injured in the
incident. He was reportedly hurt while breaking the glass to activate
the train alarm.
The suspect is believed to have boarded the train in Belgium
and the shooting took place as the train was travelling through Belgian
territory. The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, tweeted his
condemnation of what he called a “terrorist attack”.
France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, who rushed to Arras,
said the US passengers “were particularly courageous and showed great
bravery in very difficult circumstances”.
“Without their sangfroid, we could have been confronted with a
terrible drama,” he said. He described the incident as an act of
“barbaric violence”. The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, also
expressed his gratitude to the soldiers.
A White House official told reporters that Obama had been briefed on
the shooting and said: “While the investigation into the attack is in
its early stages, it is clear that their heroic actions may have
prevented a far worse tragedy.”
The French president, François Hollande, said: “All is being done to
shed light on this drama.” He had spoken to the Belgian prime minister
and the two countries were cooperating on the investigation, he added.
“The passengers are safe, the situation has been brought under
control,” the train operator, Thalys, said. The company is jointly owned
by the national rail companies of Belgium, France and Germany.
Passengers in other carriages described on French TV how the train
braked several times before pulling into Arras. Train alarms had sounded
on board and passengers in other carriages had heard staff
communicating with each other by loudspeaker about an ongoing incident
just before the train pulled in.
A police officer stands by as a passenger receives medical attention at
Arras train station. Photograph: Rafael Benamran/AFP/Getty Images
The passengers were taken to a gymnasium in Arras, where several were
treated for shock, French media reported. One, Patrick Arres, 51, told
AFP that when the train pulled into Arras station, he saw more than 30
armed police on the tracks. “They were looking for someone. People were
scared.”
Passengers arrived early on Saturday at Paris’s Gare du Nord station,
where they were greeted by a large group of staff from SNCF, the French
national rail company, with water, meals and help finding hotels and
taxis.
France remains on high alert after January’s terrorist attacks
on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in
Paris, in which gunmen killed 17 people. In May last year, four people,
including two Israeli tourists, were killed when a French gunman opened fire at the Jewish museum
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