Legion of Honour

Legion of Honor For Stopping Train Attack in French

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• published: 24 Aug 2015
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High decoration to Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler for stopping the train attack in French. President Francois Hollande on Monday will bestow France's highest decoration, the Legion of Honor, on three Americans and a Briton who subdued a heavily armed gunman aboard a high-speed train on Friday. The ceremony set for Monday morning in Paris also will include a French citizen who first discovered the gunman near a restroom as the train sped toward Paris. The event is expected to cap two days of near non-stop reporting on an intervention that French officials and anti-terror experts say in all likelihood averted a bloodbath. Speaking for the first time Sunday, one of the three Americans who overpowered a heavily armed gunman on a high-speed train traveling between Amsterdam and Paris said he thought of his survival, as well as that of everyone else on train, when he tackled the gunman. Spencer Stone, who was injured in the attack, and fellow Americans Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler spoke to the press from the U.S. Embassy in Paris, describing the rough and tumble takedown of the suspect Friday. “I feel our training mostly kicked in after the assailant was subdued, frankly," Skarlatos said. "When it came to medical care and things like that, and providing security and making sure there wasn’t another shooter. But in the beginning, it was mostly gut instinct.” Stone said he awoke from a nap to see a man struggling with an assault rifle. It "looked like it was jammed and not working," he recounted. After charging the gunman, a 26-year-old radical Islamist identified by officials as Ayoub El-Khazzani, the three Americans fought with the man until Stone was able to choke him unconscious. Nobody died in the attack. Skarlatos suggested Khazzani had little experience handling weapons. “He clearly had no firearms training whatsoever, and yes, if he knew what he was doing — or even just got lucky and did the right thing — he would have been able to operrate through all eight of those magazines and we would have all been in trouble and probably wouldn’t be here today, along with a lot of other people," Skarlatos said. Stone said he thought about "survival, to survive and for everyone on the train to make it." All three men said the event seemed "unreal." Stone said what happened Friday hasn't really sunk in yet. "It feels very unreal, feels like a dream." French investigators continue to question Khazzani, who is believed to have links to radical Islam and may have travelled to Syria. On Sunday, his lawyer told French TV the assailant is shocked to be linked to terrorism. She says he claims to have found the weapons hidden away and hoped to use them to rob passengers. French President Francois Hollande thanked U.S. President Barack Obama by telephone Saturday for the "exemplary" actions of U.S. servicemen Skarletos and Stone, saying they stopped what would have been "an extremely serious attack." Hollande said he plans to meet personally in "the coming days" with all of those involved in overcoming the would-be attacker. Skarletos, Stone and American student Sadler were joined by Briton Chris Norman in subduing the Moroccan-born gunman, who seriously wounded at least one passenger before he was swarmed. Video by voanews.