France Awards Train Attack Heroes

Sadler is one of the three American men who became instant heroes on Friday when they tackled and subdued a gunman on a train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris.

The gunman has been identified as 26-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani and is being questioned by French counterterrorism police outside Paris.

Authorities said they found the suspect’s phone in a bag left in the train, which Khazzani boarded on Friday at a Brussels station.

Three Americans and a Briton who stopped a jihadist who had opened fire on a crowded train were presented France’s top honor on August. 24.

French President Francois Hollande (L) shakes hands with U.S. Airman First Class Spencer Stone (C) as U.S. National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos (R) looks on during a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, August 24, 2015.

Chris Norman, a 62-year-old British IT consultant who lives in France, was also awarded the honour. “You are the incarnation of that”, Hollande told the four men at a ceremony to award them the Legion d’honneur. He is on a French list of around 3,000 people who are documented as being a potential militant Islamist threat. He said the men had given a lesson in courage.

“I think that one way or another, we are going to be facing this kind of problem quite a few times in the future, and I would invite you all to think about “what would I do in that situation”.

American Spencer Stone, who was slashed with the gunman’s box cutter, underwent surgery to reattach his thumb and has since been released from the hospital.

Stone, who has visible wounds to his eye and his arm in a sling, said it seemed like the gunman kept pulling more weapons left and right. But the gunman then shot Moogalian in the back with a handgun.

It sounds like a summer blockbuster, but it was real: Three young Americans on a European tour tackled a terrorist on the verge of wreaking havoc on a busy train.

A Spanish counter-terrorism source said he lived in Spain for seven years until 2014, where he came to the attention of authorities for making hardline comments defending jihad, attending a radical mosque in the port of Algeciras and being involved in drug trafficking.

Other sources said El-Khazzani may have been planning to burn up the scene of the attack after he had fired the 270 rounds of ammunition he was accused of bringing on board.

She said he had told her he only meant to rob people on the train because he was hungry.

Sacramento State President Robert S. Nelsen said eager donors are lining up to help Sadler with scholarship money for his a year ago studying kinesiology.