One serves in the Air Force, another recently served in Afghanistan in the National Guard, another is studying physical therapy in Sacramento and all three Americans are being hailed as heroes for tackling and disarming a gunman they happened to encounter on a high-speed Amsterdam-Paris train.
Air Force serviceman Spencer Stone remained hospitalised on Saturday after being stabbed, though the Pentagon said the injury was not life-threatening. Another passenger was wounded by a handgun in the attack on Friday night, according to a police union official.
French authorities are questioning the attacker, identified by police as a 26-year-old of Moroccan origin.
Anthony Sadler, a senior at Sacramento State University, was travelling with childhood friends Stone, of Carmichael, California, and Alek Skarlatos, a National Guardsman from Roseburg, Oregon, when they heard a gunshot and breaking glass. Sadler told The Associated Press that they saw a train employee sprint down the aisle followed by a gunman 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 boxcutter and slices Spencer a few times. And the three of us beat him until he was unconscious.”
‘Radical Islamist’
Meanwhile, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Saturday that the attacker was suspected of being a member of the “radical Islamist movement.”
