France to honour Americans, Briton who disarmed gunman

The French President will present France’s top honour for bravery to three Americans and a British man who tackled a gunman on a high-speed train.

And he was eventually able to “choke him unconscious” and Mr Skarlatos hit him in the head with one of the guns, before he was tied up with the help of Mr Norman.

“I went over, saw that he was squirting blood out of the left or right side of his neck”, Stone, with a cut above his right eye and his left arm in a sling to protect his injured hand, said at a press conference alongside his friends, student Anthony Sadler, also 23, and National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, 22.

Stone said another man, who is French and whose name has not been disclosed, “deserves a lot of the credit” because he was the first one to try to stop the gunman, whom authorities have identified as suspected Islamist militant Ayoub el Khazzani, 26, of Morocco.

According to AFP, Saturday’s terror investigators found that Khazzani brought with him a Kalashnikov rifle, an automatic pistol, bullets, and a blade of some type when he boarded the train in Brussels en route to Paris on Friday.

“He is dumbfounded that his act is being linked to terrorism”, David told BFM-TV, adding that the suspect who is believed to have lived in Belgium describes himself as homeless.

But the attack was quickly stopped when two off-duty US servicemen and their friend charged the gunman and restrained him.

Mr Stone’s and Mr Skarlatos’ military training kicked in while they provided first aid and searched the train to make sure there were no other gunmen, they said. Those included a box cutter with which he sliced up the young airman’s hand.

There was no mistaking the gunman’s determination, Stone said. “I turned around and I saw he had an AK-47 and it looked like” the weapon “wasn’t working, and he was trying to charge his weapon, and Alek just hit on my shoulder and said, ‘Let’s go, ‘” Stone said.

Their actions helped prevent “an extremely serious” incident, Hollande’s office said in a statement. The British national named was Chris Norman, 62, a business consultant who helps African entrepreneurs find financing in Europe.

Mr Khazzani’s father, Mohamed el-Khazzani, told the Daily Telegraph in Algeciras, Spain, that his son was a “good boy” interested in “football and fishing”.

A lawyer for the Kalashnikov-toting man whose attack was foiled by passengers on a Paris-bound train said Sunday that he claimed to not have terrorist motives and intended to rob people.

French President Francois Hollande will personally thank the group for their bravery on Monday.

“I have no idea what he was thinking and I have not spoken to him for over a year”, Mohamed el-Khazzani said.