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American Describes Taking Down Gunman on Train to France American Describes Taking Down Gunman on Train to France
(about 2 hours later)
PARIS — The two American service members who tackled a gunman on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris rushed him even though he was fully armed, then grabbed him by the neck and beat him over the head with his own automatic rifle until he was unconscious, one of them said in television interviews here on Saturday. PARIS — It was 5:45 p.m., a normal Friday afternoon on the sleek high-speed train that takes high-level European diplomats, businesspeople, tourists and ordinary citizens between Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris.
The suspect entered the train car carrying an AK-47 and a handgun, according to Alek Skarlatos, the service member who was interviewed. “I looked over at Spencer and said, ‘Let’s go,’” said Mr. Skarlatos, identified as a specialist in the Oregon Army National Guard returning from Afghanistan. With him was a friend, Airman First Class Spencer Stone. “And he jumped,” Mr. Skarlatos said. “I followed behind him by about three seconds. Spencer got the guy first, grabbed the guy by the neck, I grabbed the handgun.” Less than an hour away from Paris, a French passenger got up from his seat to use the toilets at the back of the carriage. Suddenly, in front of him rose a slightly built man. Across the man’s chest, in a sling, was an automatic rifle of the kind favored by jihadists the world over: an AK-47.
The Pentagon confirmed the Americans’ identities. The passenger — singled out by French officials for his courage, but not named by them — threw himself on the man. The gun went off, once, twice, several times. Glass shattered. A bullet hit a passenger. The man with the gun kept going down the carriage, holding his AK-47 and a Luger pistol. In a pocket was a sharp blade capable of inflicting grievous harm. The man had at least nine cartridges of ammunition, enough for serious carnage.
The suspect wounded at least one passenger before the two men subdued him, and their quick action averted what officials said could have been a blood bath. On Saturday morning the French news media, government and social media praised their actions, and President Obama also hailed their bravery. “I heard a gunshot,” Chris Norman, a British consultant who helps African entrepreneurs find financing in Europe, said at a news conference Saturday afternoon. “I heard a window shatter. I saw an employee run down the train. I saw a man holding an AK-47.”
A third American, Anthony Sadler, a friend of the two servicemen who was traveling with them, also helped restrain the suspect. Alek Skarlatos, a specialist in the National Guard from Oregon who was vacationing in Europe with his Air Force friend, Airman First Class Spencer Stone and another American, Anthony Sadler, looked up and saw the gunman.
All three Americans were decorated with an honor by the French city of Arras, where the train pulled in after the episode. President François Hollande of France will meet with them in coming days, the Élysée Palace announced. Mr. Skarlatos, who was returning from a deployment in Afghanistan, looked over at the powerfully built Mr. Stone, a martial arts enthusiast. “Let’s go, go!” he shouted.
Mr. Stone was severely cut by the suspect in the neck and hand and received treatment at a hospital in northern France. His injuries are not considered life-threatening. An amateur video taken in the immediate aftermath and uploaded to YouTube shows the suspect on the ground with his legs in the air and his hands tied behind his back, while another man — apparently Mr. Stone, kneels shirtless and evidently in pain. Groans are heard, and a voice saying, “Dude, I tried to shoot him.” Mr. Stone went after the heavily armed gunman and, with his friends, pounded him to the floor of the train carriage. “I mean, adrenaline mostly just takes over,” Mr. Skarlatos said in a Skype interview on Saturday, barely 12 hours after it was all over. “I didn’t realize, or fully comprehend, what was going on.”
The suspect was identified by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve of France on Saturday as a 26-year-old Moroccan man known to Spanish authorities as belonging to “the radical Islamist movement.” Mr. Cazeneuve, however, cautioned that the French police had not yet fully confirmed his identity. French officials had identified the man as a security risk, but he was not under surveillance and had apparently spent little time in France. Their actions saved many lives on the train, which was packed with over 500 passengers, according to French officials. The attack took place in Oignies, near the historic town of Arras.
Mr. Cazeneuve said the man lived in Spain in 2014 and Belgium in 2015. According to an official involved in Spain’s antiterrorism efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the suspect lived for about one year in Algeciras, in southern Spain, but left in March 2014. He had been kept under surveillance by the Spanish police during his time in Algeciras because of past criminal activities linked to drug trafficking, and the Spanish police shared that information with their French counterparts, according to the Spanish official. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve of France identified the suspect Saturday as a 26-year-old Moroccan man known to the Spanish authorities as a member of “the radical Islamist movement.” Mr. Cazeneuve, however, cautioned that the French police had not fully confirmed his identity. French officials had identified the man as a security risk, but he was not under surveillance and had apparently spent little time in France.
After being arrested in Arras on Friday night, the suspect was taken early Saturday to the headquarters of the antiterrorism police outside Paris, Mr. Cazeneuve said, and was being interrogated. French news reports said that he had denied having terrorist aims and that he had said he merely intended to rob the passengers. By Saturday evening, having left the hospital in Lille where he was operated on after being severely cut by the suspect, Mr. Stone and his friends were being hailed as heroes by French officials and citizens. Some were proposing them for the Legion of Honor. President François Hollande of France had already invited them to Élysée Palace for a congratulatory meeting.
But the arsenal described by the minister suggested otherwise: a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Luger automatic pistol, nine cartridges and a sharp blade — a “cutter,” the interior minister said, which he used to wound Mr. Spencer. President Obama called the three Americans “to commend and congratulate them for their courage and quick action,” a spokesman, Eric Schultz, said. And Mr. Hollande spoke with Mr. Obama by phone, “thanking him warmly” for the “exemplary conduct of the American citizens” who had prevented “an extremely serious act,” the Élysée said in a statement.
The violent encounter was over in barely two minutes. But if not for the quick action by the two American servicemen and the suspect’s malfunctioning automatic rifle, many lives could have been lost. “It could have been a real carnage,” said Chris Norman, a British businessman who helped restrain the suspect after he had been subdued. There was no thought of heroism as the men sprang into action, however. “What happened and what we did, it just feels unreal,” Mr. Skarlatos said in the Skype interview. “It felt like a dream, or a movie.”
Mr. Norman, interviewed on television, said: “The guy actually came up, he pulled out a cutter, started cutting Spencer. He cut Spencer behind the neck, he nearly cut his thumb off. We eventually got him under control. In the train carriage, Mr. Stone was the first to act, jumping up at the command of Mr. Skarlatos. He sprinted through the carriage toward the gunman, running “a good 10 meters to get to the guy,” Mr. Skarlatos said. Mr. Stone was unarmed; his target was visibly bristling with weapons.
The train, the express Thalys between Amsterdam and Paris, was hurtling through the Belgian countryside. A French passenger headed for the toilets in car No. 12, and suddenly found himself face to face with a man with a Kalashnikov over his shoulder, Mr. Cazeneuve said. With Mr. Skarlatos close behind, Mr. Stone grabbed the gunman’s neck, stunning him. But the gunman fought back furiously, slashing with his blade, slicing Mr. Stone in the neck and hand and nearly severing his thumb. Mr. Stone did not let go.
The passenger “courageously” tried to tackle the man, who fired off several shots, the minister said, hitting another passenger, of dual French-American citizenship. A train employee ran through the carriage. Mr. Norman and the two American servicemen looked up, saw the man with the Kalashnikov and ducked down into their seats. It was then that the two Americans decided to take action. The train was still moving at top speed. The gunman “pulled out a cutter, started cutting Spencer,” Mr. Norman, the British consultant, told television interviewers. “He cut Spencer behind the neck. He nearly cut his thumb off.”
“Spencer ran a good 10 meters to get to the guy,” Mr. Skarlatos told television interviewers. Mr. Skarlatos grabbed the gunman’s Luger pistol and threw it to the side. Incongruously, the gunman yelled at the men to return it, even as Mr. Stone was choking him. A train conductor rushed up and grabbed the gunman’s left arm, Mr. Norman recalled.
After they tackled the suspect, Mr. Skarlatos said he pulled the handgun away from the man and threw it to the side. He then grabbed the Kalashnikov, which was lying at the suspect’s feet, he told television interviewers. The suspect was yelling at the two to give him back his gun, said Mr. Sadler, the third American. The AK-47 had fallen to the gunman’s feet. Mr. Skarlatos picked it up and “started muzzle-thumping him in the head with it,” he said.
Instead, Mr. Skarlatos began beating the suspect with his own rifle. Mr. Skarlatos said he “started muzzle-thumping him in the head with it.” Other passengers joined in, and Mr. Stone held him in a chokehold until he lost consciousness, Mr. Skarlatos said. By then, an alarm had sounded on the train. Jean-Hugues Anglade, a well-known French actor, had broken the glass to set it off, cutting himself in the process. The train began to slow down. Julia Grunberg, a Brazilian student living in the Netherlands, looked up from her book. “It was all very normal,” she said. “Then, suddenly, the alarm started ringing. We were very fast; then we were very slow.”
With the gunman subdued, Mr. Stone badly cut and bloodied and the other passengers stunned, Mr. Skarlatos discovered that the suspect’s guns had malfunctioned. Mr. Anglade accused the train personnel on Saturday of having fled the scene of the struggle, abandoning the passengers and cowering in the engine car. He told the French news media that the behavior of the staff had been “terrible” and “inhuman.”
“He had pulled the trigger on the AK, the primer was just faulty, so the gun didn’t go off, luckily,” Mr. Skarlatos said. “And he didn’t know how to fix it, which is also very lucky.” In addition, he had not been able to load his own handgun. “There was no magazine in it, so he either dropped it accidentally or didn’t load it properly, so he was only able to get what appeared to be one shot off,” Mr. Skarlatos said. Mr. Norman and Mr. Sadler had joined in the efforts to subdue the gunman, who “put up quite a bit of a fight,” Mr. Norman recalled at the news conference in Arras on Saturday. “My thought was, ‘I’m probably going to die anyway, so let’s go.’ Once you start moving, you’re not afraid anymore.”
Meanwhile, despite bleeding heavily, Mr. Stone went to the aid of the gunshot victim, Mr. Sadler said. “Even though he was injured, he went to help the other man who was injured,” Mr. Sadler said. “Without his help, he would have died.” Mr. Stone, wounded and bleeding, kept the suspect in a chokehold. “Spencer Stone is a very strong guy,” Mr. Norman said. The suspect passed out. Mr. Norman busied himself binding him up with a tie.
The entire episode happened so quickly that the three men barely had time to think about the danger they had faced. Mr. Skarlatos, the AK-47 in hand, began to patrol through the carriages, looking for other gunmen. He made a series of startling discoveries: The suspect’s guns had malfunctioned, and he had not had the competence to fix them.
“We were scared for sure, but, I mean, adrenaline mostly just takes over, because I didn’t have time to think,” Mr. Skarlatos said. “I didn’t realize or fully comprehend what was going on. It felt like it was a dream or a movie.” “He had pulled the trigger on the AK. The primer was just faulty, so the gun didn’t go off, luckily,” Mr. Skarlatos said. “And he didn’t know how to fix it, which is also very lucky.” In addition, the gunman had not been able to load his own handgun: “There was no magazine in it, so he either dropped it accidentally or didn’t load it properly, so he was only able to get what appeared to be one shot off,” Mr. Skarlatos said.
On Saturday afternoon, President Obama called the three Americans “to commend and congratulate them for their courage and quick action,” said the principal deputy press secretary, Eric Schultz. Bleeding heavily, Mr. Stone went to the aid of a gunshot victim, Mr. Sadler said. “Even though he was injured, he went to help the other man who was injured,” he said. “Without his help, he would have died.”
Also Saturday, Mr. Hollande, the French president, spoke with Mr. Obama, “thanking him warmly” for the “exemplary conduct of the American citizens,” the Élysée Palace said. Slowly, the train pulled into the Arras station. “Somebody came in,” Ms. Grunberg recalled, and told passengers, “You have to get off the train.”
The United States European Command Commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, praised the men in a statement on Saturday: “These men are heroes. Actions like this clearly illustrate the courage and commitment our young men and women have all the time, whether they are on duty or on leave.” “While I was leaving the train,” she said, “I saw someone in a wheelchair, police dogs. It was all very confusing.”
All those who took part realized it could have turned out far worse. “I mean, if that guy’s weapon had been functioning properly,” Mr. Skarlatos said, “I don’t even want to think about how it would have went.”