Whatever his politics, there’s no question the man with the AK-47 wrestled to the ground onboard a high-speed train was out to commit a terrorist act. Three heroic American men, two of them unarmed servicemen in civilian clothing, helped overpower a 26-year-old gunman armed with an automatic rifle, handgun, knife and razor blades who brazenly opened fire in a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris on Friday evening. One of the Americans, Alek Skarlatos, is a member of the National Guard, the other, is Spencer Stone, a member of the Air Force. Stone ended up injured in the terrifying and chaotic scene aboard the train as it sped through the Belgian countryside on Friday evening at the height of the tourist season in Europe. Stone is currently being treated at a French hospital for serious wounds inflicted when the attacker slashed him with a blade. The third American is named Anthony Sadler. Twitter erupted with news of the two soldiers shutting down the gunman as more than one person tweeted that it was right out of a real-life “Mission Impossible” movie. French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, suffered minor injuries when he broke the glass to sound the alarm. It could have been far worse had it not been for the quick-thinking passengers, French officials said. “Without their courage this would have surely been a terrible tragedy,” Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, said Friday. The two men were near a bathroom when they heard a familiar and frightening sound: the bolt being thrown on a Kalashnikov rifle as someone prepared to fire. After they confronted the suspect, a wild melee broke out on the train and passengers finally helped subdue him. "Spencer got to the guy first and grabbed the guy by the neck," Skarlatos told Sky News. "I grabbed the handgun, got that away from the guy and threw it. Then I grabbed the AK-47, which was at his feet, and started muzzle-bumping him in the head with it. "Everybody just started beating the guy while Spencer held the chokehold until he went unconscious." “I heard a noise and I thought it was an argument between two people,” a passenger identified as Damien told the French newspaper Libération. “I saw a guy run through with a black shirt in the hallway. One man, who was shirtless, was pointing a gun at him. I heard click, click. I thought it was a toy gun. There were a few seconds of face-to-face combat between the two men, and the passenger jumped on him and tackled him to the ground. That guy, he had balls, I didn’t move from where I was standing. I could never do that.” “This could have been a monumental catastrophe with great loss of life,” a high-ranking Paris police source told The Daily Beast. He said the facts were not in yet but said the passengers were “very lucky” the soldiers were aboard the train. Anti-terror police are investigating the background of the suspect, who Spanish authorities claim is of Moroccan origin and known to them as a terrorism suspect. He was taken into custody by French police near the town of Arras, France, and the train was evacuated, according to Pierre-Henri Brandet, a spokesman for the French Interior Ministry. The incident, which occurred around 6 p.m. local time, took place as the train was traveling through southern Belgium, a spokesman for SNCF, the French national rail system said. A British consultant, Chris Norman, was also injured trying to subdue the attacker. According to an interview Anthony Sadler gave, even after being gravely injured, Stone, "went to go help the other man who was bleeding also. Without his help, he would have died." French President François Hollande thanked the men on Saturday, and awarded them with medals for their bravery. He also said in a statement that “everything is being done to shed light” on the shooting. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...y-u-s-marines-stop-a-terrorist-in-france.html
So, not Marines? I guess for non-US residents every US army soldier is a member of Delta Force anyway. Chuck Norris is the commander-in-chief, right?
They'll never pay for another beer in Europe again. Gonna have all the women they want too. The Active Duty Airman will be on the fast track for sure. Can pretty much write his own ticket.
By May, it was decided: Three friends who met as middle-schoolers in California would take a European vacation. “I’m going to Europe!!!! Like wow,” Anthony Sadler, 23, wrote on Twitter on May 14, three months before jetting off with Alek Skarlatos, 22, and Spencer Stone, 23. On his first international trip, he planned to spend three weeks traveling across Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Spain with Mr. Skarlatos and Mr. Stone, two of his closest friends, both of whom are in the Armed Forces. Mr. Skarlatos is a specialist in the Oregon National Guard; Mr. Stone is an airman in the Air Force. Meals and sightseeing were part of the itinerary. Disrupting an act of terror was not. But on Friday, they did just that, tackling and subduing a gunman on a high-speed train in France. The next day, their faces were on televisions around the world, and they were being hailed as heroes. The three friends had planned to spend Friday night in Amsterdam, but changed their minds at the last minute and took a train that day headed to Paris, Mr. Skarlatos’s father, Emanuel, told The Oregonian newspaper. Mr. Sadler, a college student in Sacramento, and Mr. Skarlatos had come to meet with Mr. Stone, who is stationed in the Azores Islands near Portugal. Mr. Skarlatos, who returned to Oregon in July after a nine-month deployment in Afghanistan, left for Europe on Aug. 11. Mr. Sadler followed the next day. On Monday, Mr. Sadler wrote in a response to a comment on a Facebook photo that he was going to Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona, after having visited Rome, Venice, Munich and Berlin. They were on a high-speed train bound for Paris when, after a stop in Brussels, they heard what sounded like gunfire, according to Mr. Sadler’s sister, Arissa. After seeing the gunman struggling with another passenger, the three friends rushed to subdue him. No one was critically hurt or killed in the attack. Although Mr. Stone’s thumb was severely cut, he moved quickly to help stem the bleeding of another injured passenger. Mr. Stone aided the other passenger because he is a trained medical technician whose “second instinct” is to help in a crisis, said Airman First Class Sean Murphy, a friend at the Lajes air base in the Azores, where both men serve as emergency medical personnel. Still, Mr. Murphy said in a telephone interview from Lajes, he was shocked when he woke up on Saturday to hundreds of emails overnight saying that his friend was a hero of the French train episode. “We’re both medical techs, sure, but as far as this craziness? No,” he said. Col. Rick Sheffe, Mr. Stone’s commanding officer at Lajes, said he had been waiting in line — behind President Obama — to speak to Mr. Stone. At Lajes on Saturday, enlisted colleagues of Mr. Stone were celebrating all day, officials said. A practitioner of jujitsu who has a taste for strawberry caipirinhas, Mr. Stone had been planning his 26-day European vacation since he first arrived at Lajes in March, Mr. Murphy said. Mr. Murphy said both he and Mr. Stone wanted to be paramedics and firefighters when they got out of the Air Force. Mr. Sadler is scheduled to return to the United States on Aug. 30 to begin his senior year the next day at California State University, Sacramento, where he is studying kinesiology with an emphasis in conditioning and coaching. He is also a member of Kappa Sigma, a social fraternity, and the Philosophy Club, said Robert S. Nelsen, the university president, in a statement. Ms. Sadler, 25, said her brother wanted to become a doctor and work for the National Basketball Association, preferably for his favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe Bryant is his favorite player, she said. Mr. Skarlatos moved to Oregon, where he graduated from Roseburg High School and has been a guardsman for three years, according to The Oregonian. He had planned to visit Greece and Germany before returning Sept. 9 to Oregon, his father said. Karen Skarlatos, Alek’s stepmother, told the newspaper that the family was “very proud.” “I’ve always said that I felt I could trust putting my life in Alek’s hands,” Ms. Skarlatos said. “I honestly can’t say I’m surprised that he knew what to do when faced with that kind of situation. It’s just who he is.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/w...d-train-attack-were-boyhood-friends.html?_r=0
The french train crew locked themselves in the last car, trapping passangers between the locked doors and the terrorists. Typical french act SMH
Glad we can say we still have ordinary people that rise to the ocashon and become heroes in this world
Airman Stone was stabbed this morning. He was not expected to live, but now he's doing better. Stabbed 3 times in the chest, just walking down the street in Sacramento.
WTF? Did they say what happened? I've never had so much violence in my life as he's had in the past few months.
