A day ago he was just another tourist on a train. On Saturday, U.S. Airman First Class Spencer Stone was treated for knife wounds in a hospital in France and applauded by world leaders for foiling what officials called an attempted terrorist attack.
Stone was touring Europe with two friends he grew up with in California. The three men in their 20s helped overpower a Kalashnikov-toting suspected Islamist militant on a high speed train heading for Paris from Amsterdam.
Among the other heroes of the nighttime drama was a Frenchman on his way to the toilet who first tried to tackle the assailant as he entered the carriage, and a 62-year-old Briton who still had blood spattered over his shirt as he spoke to journalists on Friday night.
But it may have been Stone, 23, of Lajes Air Base, Azores, who took the biggest risk. Stone’s height of at least six feet two inches and Jujitsu martial art and American football background probably helped him, a relative said.
“He was the first one to jump on him, he’s the one who got cut up … none of us are injured but Spencer took a few injuries and he just had no fear,” 23-year-old student Anthony Sadler told Reuters.
“That’s our friend so once we saw him go we had to go and join him … We couldn’t have just left everybody [to] die like that. It was a crazy situation,” said Sadler, a student at Sacramento State University.
Sadler said everything happened very fast as the attacker, armed with an automatic pistol and a box cutter as well as the AK-47 assault rifle, appeared to try to clear his weapon which seemed to be jammed.
Struck by bullet
One French-American passenger was hit by a bullet and was hospitalized for a chest wound. He was in serious but stable condition, authorities said.
“I woke up to basically people ducking and then I was, like, ‘Why is everybody ducking?’ and then, when I turned round to look, he, the gunman, had just entered the car with the AK and then I was, like: ‘This is really happening’,” Sadler said.
“We just all ran back there and we tried to do whatever we could to try and beat him up so he didn’t shoot anybody. He pulled out a box cutter and cut Spencer a couple of times but beside that we just tried to do whatever we could.”
Stone was treated for cuts and left the hospital on Saturday with his left arm bandaged and in a sling. He waved with his right hand to well-wishers and news media.
The elder Sadler, a 57-year-old pastor at Sacramento’s Shiloh Baptist Church, said: “We’re very, very thankful to God that he was not hurt or killed.”
Asked if his son would continue his European trip, Sadler said “No, the trip is over… That’s enough. He’ll be returning home as soon as possible.”
Fingerprint evidence shows that the gunman is a Moroccan known to European authorities as a suspected Islamist militant, according to a source familiar with the case. He is 26 and was under surveillance by Spanish authorities.
Briton Chris Norman, who helped the Americans overpower the gunman, said: “Without Spencer we’d all be dead.”
French movie actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, star of “Betty Blue” and “Nikita,” who was also on the train, was quoted as saying by BFMTV: “We were stuck in the wrong place with the right people. It’s miraculous.”