3 Americans used 'instinct' to take down armed man

PARIS -

Three American travelers say they relied on gut instinct and a close bond forged over years of friendship as they took down a heavily armed man on a passenger train speeding through Belgium.

U.S. Airman Spencer Stone, recounting for the first time yesterday how a likely catastrophe was averted two days earlier, said the gunman, an assault rifle strapped to his bare chest, seemed like he was "ready to fight to the end." But he added, "So were we."

Without a note of bravado but a huge dose of humility, the three described Friday's drama on an Amsterdam-to-Paris fast train.

His arm in a sling, Stone, 23, said he was coming out of a deep sleep when the gunman appeared.

One of his friends, Alek Skarlatos, a 22-year-old National Guardsman recently back from Afghanistan, "just hit me on the shoulder and said, 'Let's go.' "

French President Francois Hollande and a bevy of officials are presenting the Americans with the prestigious Legion of Honor today. A French citizen who first came across the gunman near a train bathroom and a British man who joined to help tie up the assailant also are being honored with the award, according to the president's office.

The gunman, identified as 26-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani, is detained and being questioned by French counterterrorism police outside Paris. French and Spanish authorities say El-Khazzani is an Islamic extremist who may have spent time in Syria. El-Khazzani's lawyer said yesterday that he was homeless and trying to rob passengers on the train to feed himself.

Authorities in France, Belgium and Spain, where he once lived, are investigating the case. French authorities can legally hold him for questioning until Tuesday, when they must charge him or free him.

His case raises questions about train security as well as how a man who had been on the radar of all three countries managed to board the train unbothered and loaded with weapons.

Skarlatos said El-Khazzani "clearly had no firearms training whatsoever," but if he "even just got lucky and did the right thing he would have been able to operate through all eight of those magazines and we would've all been in trouble, and probably wouldn't be here today, along with a lot of other people."

Armed with an arsenal of weapons and apparently determined, he presented a formidable challenge to the vacationing friends who snapped into action out of what Skarlatos said was "gut instinct."

His and Stone's military training "mostly kicked in after the assailant was already subdued," he said, noting the medical care Stone provided and checking cars for weapons elsewhere.

"We just kind of acted. There wasn't much thinking going on," he said, at least on my end." Stone replied with a chuckle, "None at all."

Stone and Skarlatos moved in to tackle the gunman and take his gun. The third young man, Anthony Sadler, 23, moved in to help subdue the assailant. "All three of us started punching" him, Stone said. Stone said he choked him unconscious. A British businessman then joined in the fray.

Stone, of Carmichael, Calif., spoke at a live news conference at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris along with Sadler, a senior at Sacramento State University in California, and Skarlatos, of Roseburg, Ore.

Stone is also credited with saving a French-American teacher wounded in the neck with a gunshot wound and squirting blood. Stone described matter-of-factly that he "just stuck two of my fingers in his hole and found what I thought to be the artery, pushed down and the bleeding stopped." He said he kept the position until paramedics arrived, apparently in Arras.

El-Khezzani boarded in Brussels with what France's interior minister said was an arsenal of weapons that included an automatic pistol, numerous loaded magazines and the box cutter. He was subdued while the train traveled through Belgium, but was taken into custody in the northern French town of Arras, where the train was rerouted.

El-Khezzani's lawyer said her client doesn't understand the suspicions, media attention or even that a person was wounded. For him, there were no gunshots fired, Sophie David said.

"He is dumbfounded that his action is being characterized as terrorism," she said.

He described himself as homeless and David said she had "no doubt" this was true, saying he was "very, very thin" as if suffering from malnutrition and "with a very wild look in his eyes."