Americans Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone take out Paris train gunman
An American soldier spoke with Sky News, detailing how he and fellow US serviceman Spencer Stone overpowered a gunman on the train from Amsterdam to Paris. The train staff are under criticism of abandoning the passengers.
Alek Skarlatos, 22, was enjoying a trip with his friend and Airman Spencer Stone and Anthony Sadler after a recent tour in Afghanistan. The trio heard gunshots, the terrorist burst into their carriage and was cocking his automatic rifle and Skarlatos and Stone charged him.
“I just looked at Spencer and said, ‘Let’s go!’,” Alek said in the interview. “Spencer got to the guy first, grabbed the guy by the neck and I grabbed the handgun, got the handgun away from the guy and threw it.”
“Then I grabbed the AK, which was at his feet, and started muzzle thumping him in the head with it,” the National Guardsman from Oregon explained.
Stone, from California, was cut by the attacker behind his neck and his thumb was nearly sliced off as the man pulled a boxcutter and fought back as they wrestled him down.
“The gunman pulls out a boxcutter and slices Spencer a few times.” Sadler added, noting that the shooter “never said a word.”
Two passengers were wounded in the attack and Stone did require surgery to repair his badly wounded hand, but is said to be “doing fine.” The three Americans were aided by fellow passenger British IT consultant Chris Norman.
Bleeding badly, Stone actually helped a passenger who had his throat slit.
“In the aftermath, we saw that a man’s throat had been split and he was bleeding profusely,” Sadler said.
Spencer Stone photo/ Facebook
“Spencer, who has some paramedics training, just clogged up his neck so he wouldn’t die. This is all in the midst of Spencer bleeding profusely himself. It was just really heroic of him to do something like that.”
“I just applaud my friends for being on point,” he concluded to Sky News.
Skarlatos noted that the terrorist’s rifle had actually jammed.
“He didn’t know how to fix it, which is very lucky,” he said. “If that guy’s weapon had been functioning properly I don’t even want to think about how it would have went.
“We were incredibly lucky.”
The man was a Moroccan Muslim, age 26, and is being held by authorities.
Train staff aboard are being accused of abandoning the passengers, according to the report by the Daily Mail.
“Train staff on board the high speed train which was the scene of a suspected Islamic extremist attack yesterday have been accused of barricading themselves in their staffroom and locking the door, leaving passengers to fend for themselves,” the report states.
“French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who was on board the Thalys train during the attack has slammed train staff who he claims locked themselves in an office away from the attacker and refused to help the trapped passengers.”
The three Americans and Norman have already been awarded medals of bravery from the local mayor.
