Train heroes explain how they took down gunman

Officials didn’t disclose a possible motive for the attack, but Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Spanish authorities had notified French intelligence about the suspect because he belongs to a “radical Islamist movement”.

U.S. airman Spencer Stone says he awakened from a nap before springing into action and subduing a gunman on a high-speed train with two American travel companions.

Briton Chris Norman, who lives in France, said the gunman walked into his railway vehicle carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a handgun and a box-cutter knife.

The three American friends, two of them US servicemen, who tackled him, recalled their encounter with Khazzani at length in a press conference yesterday.

“Everything happened very fast”, Anthony Sadler, a student travelling with friends Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, both members of the US military, told France’s BFMTV.

Mr Stone was stabbed in the neck in the struggle but left Lille Hospital on Saturday night with his left arm bandaged and in a sling, giving a quick wave as he walked out to a black vehicle with diplomatic licence plates.

Authorities in France, Belgium and Spain, where he once lived, are investigating the case. President Barack Obama telephoned them Saturday to commend and congratulate them, the White House said.

“In times of crisis…do something”, Sadler said. He was just telling us to give back his gun.

“We couldn’t find [the carriage] at first” he said, but “we made a decision to get up because the wi-fi wasn’t so good in that car”.

“The word “hero” has never been more appropriate”, Hartley said.

“At that time he was cocking the AK-47”, Sadler said today from the U.S. Embassy in Paris, “So it was either do something or die”. A fourth man, American Spencer Stone, was wounded in the take-down and remains in the hospital.

Autumn Schulze, Skarlatos’ Costco co-worker who is in the same National Guard unit, said her friend’s heroic act is remarkable, but not surprising.

All three men said the event seemed “unreal”.

The third person injured was French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who has a light hand injury, Blondeau said.

He said: “I really could see us all dying because we were all prisoners in that train, it would have been impossible to escape from that nightmare”.

The heavily-armed alleged attacker, 25-year-old Ayoub El Khazzani, is said to be “dumbfounded” by accusations he was intending to carry out a terror attack despite being known to intelligence services in several countries for extremist links.

When the Americans charged, Norman recalled thinking “I’m probably going to die anyway, so let’s go”.

“A few days later he decided to get on a train that some other homeless people told him would be full of wealthy people travelling from Amsterdam to Paris and he hoped to feed himself by armed robbery”, David said.

A Downing Street spokesman said: “The bravery of Mr Norman and the other passengers helped to prevent a awful incident”.

Mr Stone said: “I turned around and he appeared to have what looked like a AK-47”.

A Spanish counter-terrorism source said Khazzani had lived in Spain for seven years, until last year. The attacker started jabbing at Stone with a box cutter and all three friends began punching and hitting him to subdue him.

Undated photos of Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler.