A gunman tackled by young Americans on a train
between Amsterdam and Paris pleaded with them to hand
back his Kalashnikov after they overpowered him, one of
the group said.
“Everything happened very fast,” Anthony Sadler, a
student travelling with friends Alex Skarlatos and
Spencer Stone, both members of the US military, told
the media.
“I didn’t realise what was happening until I saw a guard
run past. I looked back and saw a guy enter with a
Kalashnikov. My friends and I got down and then I said
‘Let’s get him’,” said Skarlatos, a 22-year-old member of
the National Guard in Oregon, who has recently
returned from service in Afghanistan.
“We didn’t know if the gun wasn’t working or anything
like that. Spencer just ran anyway and if anyone had
gotten shot, it would have been Spencer and we’re just
very lucky that nobody got killed,” he added.
Stone tackled the gunman but was cut with a knife.
“At that point I showed up and grabbed the gun from him
and basically started beating him in the head until he fell
unconscious,” said Skarlatos.
Sadler added that the man — later identified as a 26-
year-old of Moroccan origin — “didn’t stand a chance.”
“As soon as we saw him, we all ran back there. It all
happened really fast,” said Sadler.
“He didn’t say anything. He was just telling us to give
back his gun. ‘Give me back my gun! Give me back my
gun!’ But we just carried on beating him up and
immobilised him and that was it.”
Mobile phone footage from inside the train and shown on
several TV stations shows the suspect, a skinny man
wearing white trousers and no shirt, flattened on the floor
of the train with his hands and feet tied behind his back.
A Kalashnikov is seen leaning against a seat and blood is
visible on a window.
Sadler said he had spoken to Stone, recovering from the
knife wound in hospital, adding that he was “doing well”.
“He can’t believe that all this happened,” said Sadler.
“I’m just a college student. I came to see my friends for
my first trip to Europe and we stop a terrorist. It’s kind
of crazy.”
President Barack Obama singled out the Americans,
saying “it is clear that their heroic actions may hve
prevented a far worse tragedy.”
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the
group showed “great bravery.”
“Without their cool-headed actions we could have been
faced with a terrible incident,” he said.
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