“I’m thankful for the soldier that helped save my cousin”, he said.
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The keen musician and cyclist was shot in the back of the neck and the bullet passed through his body causing nerve damage, his sister said. “It was uncommon, unusual”, Moogalian stated in an interview from his hospital mattress revealed in Paris Match journal on Wednesday. Mark then turned around to get his wife out of harm’s way but did not realize the gunman still had a pistol.
The mystery identity of the first heroic passenger to wrestle a weapon from the high-speed train gunman can be disclosed for the first time by The Telegraph. The attacker was eventually overpowered by other passengers, including three American friends on vacation. “I saw him coming out but the process was delayed so I made a decision to go and see what’s happening.”, said Moogalian.
“The French President has reached out to ask him to come to dinner when he is fit enough”.
Mark Moogalian remained hospitalized Tuesday in the northern city of Lille with a bullet wound in his neck and back, and his sister in Virginia said the reports that he was shot while trying to wrest the assault rifle from the gunman were in character.
Lying on the floor of the train compartment, Moogalian watched as the attacker approached and picked up the rifle.
Isabelle Moogalian recounted racing through the train searching for a doctor, screaming: “Help me!” Closing his eyes to play lifeless, he then heard two people rush previous and deal with the gunman. Investigators say the suspect Ayoub El-Khazzani walked out of a bathroom with an AK-47.
Moogalian runs a language school from a houseboat on the outskirts of Paris, according to the school’s website. Music and art are clearly his passions, as his personal website attests, with its range of sculpture, paintings, photos and downloads of music he performs in a duo with his wife.
Thankfully, no one died due to the efforts of Moogalian and four other men: Chris Norman from the United Kingdom and Americans Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos. Within the couple’s biography, they describe themselves as “largely bicultural, bringing one of the best of each worlds”.
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She credited Spencer Stone, a 23-year-old U.S. airman who had been traveling through Europe with two friends, for saving the life of the professor of English.
