Tragedy averted when riders disarm attacker

Associated Press

PARIS

A series of heroic actions by passengers thwarted an attack by a man with ties to radical Islam who boarded a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris armed with a Kalashnikov, a pistol and a box cutter, officials said Saturday as more details emerged about the dramatic incident that ended with three people injured but no one killed.

The attacker, identified by a French official close to the investigation as Ayoub El-Khazzani, 26, was on the radar of authorities in France, Belgium and Spain. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

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

As the train passed through Belgium, a French citizen trying to use the toilet encountered and tried to subdue the gunman, who had the assault rifle strapped across his shoulder, Cazeneuve said. Bullets started flying, and two American servicemen, with help from an American friend and a Briton, tackled and disarmed him.

The Briton, businessman Chris Norman, said he was working on his computer when he heard a shot and glass breaking and saw a train worker running. The servicemen – U.S. Airman Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos, a National Guardsman from Roseburg, Ore. – and their friend, Anthony Sadler, a senior at Sacramento State University in California, heard glass breaking at the same time.

“I knew we had to do something or he was just going to kill people,” Skarlatos told Oregon television station KEZI. “I mean, he wasn’t shooting at the time, so I figured it was a good time to do it.”

Sadler told The Associated Press that they saw a train employee sprint down the aisle followed by a man with an automatic rifle.

“As he was cocking it to shoot it, Alek just yells, ‘Spencer, go!’ And Spencer runs down the aisle,” Sadler said. “Spencer makes first contact, he tackles the guy, Alek wrestles the gun away from him, and the gunman pulls out a box cutter and slices Spencer a few times. And the three of us beat him until he was unconscious.”

Norman said he was the fourth to jump into the fray, grabbing the gunman’s right arm and tying it with his tie.

“He had a Kalashnikov, he had a magazine full. .... My thought was, ‘OK, probably I’m going to die anyway. So, let’s go,’” he said. “I’d rather die being active.”

Authorities said that in addition to the guns, El-Khazzani had nine loaded magazines for the Kalashnikov. Skarlatos, who served in Afghanistan, said that when he examined the assault rifle, he found the gunman had tried to fire it but that it didn’t go off because it had a bad primer.

Sadler said the gunman remained silent throughout the brief incident. But with the weapons he carried, “he was there to do business,” Skarlatos said in an interview shown on French television.

French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who cut his finger to the bone while activating the train’s emergency alarm, heaped praise on the Americans, recounting the high emotion of the episode to Paris Match.

“I thought it was the end, that we would die,” he said. “Yes, we saw ourselves dying because we were prisoners in this train, and it was impossible to escape the nightmare.”

The train, in Belgium, was rerouted to Arras in northern France, the nearest station, where El-Khazzani was arrested.

In addition to Anglade, the others injured were Stone, who was taken to a hospital in nearby Lille with a hand injury, and an unidentified dual French-American citizen with a bullet wound who was helicoptered to another hospital in Lille.

Stone, of Carmichael, Calif., was released from the hospital later Saturday. Stone and Sadler, both 23, and Skarlatos, 22, had been traveling together in Europe. President Barack Obama telephoned them Saturday to commend and congratulate them, the White House said. They and the Frenchman who first confronted the gunman are to meet Monday with French President Francois Hollande.

Europe’s major rail stations are patrolled by soldiers armed with rifles, but passengers can board most high-speed trains without passing through metal detectors or having their bags searched or showing their passports.