French train heroes: ‘We stopped a terrorist – kinda crazy’

Reports say Hollande plans to meet at the Elysee Palace on August 24 with the three men, who overpowered an attacker who was armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, an automatic pistol, and a box cutter on the high-speed train just after it crossed from Belgium into northern France.

Stone said the sound woke him up from “a deep sleep”, and when he turned and saw the gunman, his first thought was about “survival, to survive and for everyone on the train to make it”.

President Barack Obama telephoned them Saturday to commend and congratulate them, the White House said.

Of the Americans, two are U.S. servicemembers.

He said Alek Skarlatos, a National Guardsman from Roseburg, Oregon, who had just returned from a tour in Afghanistan, traveled to Germany to visit relatives he’d never met. Later in the trip, he met up with Stone and Sadler in Amsterdam to watch the soccer team Ajax.

French President Francois Hollande plans to host a meeting with them Monday that will include top government ministers, his office said.

The official insisted on not being identified by name because of the ongoing probe.

Four people were hurt in Friday’s melee – including Stone, who was cut by the attacker. Three Americans and one British passenger helped subdue the gunman, according to their own accounts.

Norman and Sadler tied up the suspect.

French rail firm SNCF said there were 554 people on board. Then I heard one guy, an American say “go get him”. He said his son, a senior at Sacramento State University, had planned to travel in Europe with his college friends through the end of August.

Off-duty US servicemen Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos tackled the Moroccan gunman, named as Ayoub El-Kahzani, 26, after he loaded a Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle on the packed Amsterdam to Paris train. “And the three of us beat him until he was unconscious”, he said.

His mother, Joyce Eskel, said her son called her from a hospital and told her the gunman also tried to shoot him twice but the weapon didn’t work.

The attacker, Norman said, “put up quite a bit of a fight”.

Spencer Stone, an American Air Drive serviceman stabbed whereas tackling a gunman on a European practice, has been transferred to a bigger hospital in northern France. “He actually held him very well and Aleksander and Anthony had a pretty good go at hitting him”.

Cazeneuve cautioned that the suspect’s identity is “not yet established with certainty”.

The assailant is believed to be a 26-year-old Moroccan man known to French intelligence services. after Spanish security services identified him as radical Islamist in connection with extremist movement. The three friends had been traveling together in Europe.

The student – Sid Ahmed Ghlam – was arrested in April 2015 as he allegedly prepared to attack churches in Paris and other targets. “He denies that there was any terrorist dimension to his plot”. And his friends described the drama which unfolded as they sprang into action to stop potential carnage on Friday.

Questions have focused, however, on the attacker and alleged links to jihadists in Syria.

The train was subsequently rerouted to Arras, France. “I don’t know how many magazines he had”, Norman said. Then he added, “He inspires me”. “He was not necessarily very strong”. Norman was the next person on the scene to help tackle the gunman.

In the wake of the episode, Belgium said it would increase baggage checks and patrols on high-speed trains. Anglade said he had felt certain he, his two children and family were doomed.

Mayor of Arras Frederic Leturque told NBC News French officials were interviewing Skarlatos and Stone.

French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, whose finger was injured “to the bone” as he broke the emergency alarm glass, told the magazine Paris-Match that passengers thought they were going to die “because we were prisoners of this train”.

The auto he was traveling in was next to the train engine vehicle.

“A lady came into our train shouting ‘he was shot, he is losing blood, is there a doctor?'” he said. “With out them, all of us can be lifeless”. “In vain…. No one answered”.

He added later, “What else is there to do?” It was really nothing more than that. “In the process, Spencer gets slashed multiple times by the box cutter”. Maybe they needed some help….

The lawyer said El-Khazzani “told me that for him, nothing happened…”

“I saw a man with a rifle, my friends and I got down, and I said: Let’s go”.

A French passenger tried to disarm Khazzani as he exited a toilet cubicle, but he got away and fired several shots.