Americans help subdue gunman on French train

Cazeneuve did not mention any visit to Syria or France, only naming Spain and Belgium as the suspected militant’s places of residence, this year and last.

STEPHANIE LECOCQ/EPA Police officers patrolling on the Thalys train station platforms at Brussels Midi Station, in Brussels, Belgium.

The trio were on their way to Paris from Amsterdam when the incident on the train occurred.

When a French passenger tried to enter a toilet, he encountered the gunman and tried to overpower him.

“Without their sangfroid we could have been confronted with a bad drama”, Cazeneuve said.

A friend of theirs, Anthony Sadler, and Chris Norman, a British man who lives in France, also helped restrain the attacker.

Mr Stone was helped by US National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos and Sacramento State University student Anthony Sadler along with British IT expert Chris Norman in tackling El-Khazzani. “I mean he wasn’t shooting at the time so I figured it was a good time to do it”.

Sadler said French authorities were to speak with him Saturday in Arras, where scientific police circulated around the cordoned-off train and train station.

“We couldn’t just let everybody die like that”, said Anthony Sadler.

He said: “We ended up by tying him up, then during the process the guy actually pulled out a cutter and starting cutting Spencer”.

With Mr Stone holding the gunman in a headlock, the passengers hit him until he fell unconscious. He waved with his right hand to well-wishers and news media.

“He had a Kalashnikov – I don’t know how many magazines he had”. Anglade, told the magazine Paris-Match that passengers thought they were going to die “because we were prisoners of this train”.

Stone was to undergo surgery but he is doing “relatively well”, Arras Mayor Frederic Leturque told the AP Saturday.

“I’d rather die being active”, he said.

According to witnesses, the shooter emerged from the train’s bathroom…shirtless with the rifle over his shoulder. Authorities said that in addition to the guns, he had nine loaded magazines for the Kalashnikov.

The governor said that Alek Skarlatos “is the pride of Oregon”.

“The gunman never said a word”. Stone then acted quickly to help reduce the bleeding of another wounded passenger, they said, praising his bravery.

The elder Sadler, a 57-year-old pastor at Sacramento’s Shiloh Baptist Church, said: “We’re very, very thankful to God that he was not hurt or killed”. But Cazeneuve told reporters El-Khazzani lived in Belgium in 2015, and did not say whether he had spent time in France.

Stone, 23, who was the first to take on the gunman, was cut in the incident but was expected to be released from a hospital on Saturday.

Stone was treated in a French hospital. The three friends had been traveling together in Europe.

As for the American heroes, they said they did what they had to do.

“With the grace of God, that could have been the end of his young life”, Tony Sadler said of his son’s heroic moment Friday.

The attack has been condemned by French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuv, who called it “an attack of barbaric violence”, and expressed his “gratitude and admiration” for the men’s actions.

French authorities said he had lived in the southern Spanish city of Algeciras, frequenting a mosque which is under surveillance there.

There were discrepancies between French and Spanish accounts of the gunman’s travels.

The unidentified official from Spain’s anti-terrorism unit said Saturday that the individual, who has been identified as being originally a Moroccan, had traveled to Syria before returning to France for engaging in potential militant activities. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified by name.

The French official close to the investigation said the French signal “sounded” on May 10 in Berlin, where El-Khazzani was flying to Turkey.

The Pentagon confirmed the Americans’ presence on the train, although it didn’t confirm their identities or military status. Belgium also announced it was imposing stricter security on trains. In June, a lone attacker claiming allegiance to Islamic radicals beheaded his employer and set off an explosion at an American-owned factory in France, raising concerns about other scattered, hard-to-predict attacks.

Amy and her husband Joe were sitting quietly on the Amsterdam-Paris Thalys train Friday evening when the window behind her was shattered by a bullet, showering her with glass.

Achoui-Lesage reported from Lille.