Sadler is one of the three American men who became instant heroes on Friday when they tackled and subdued a gunman on a train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. The president also honored the Frenchman, who first discovered the gunman near a restroom on a train auto.
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El-Khazzani was allegedly armed with an automatic rifle and a box cutter when he attacked passengers on the Paris-bound train, officials say.
The three Americans described the experience during a press conference as simply a matter of choosing to live instead of waiting to die. He said he came across the stash of weapons in a park in Belgium and was actually only looking to rob passengers because he was hungry, his lawyer at the time, Sophie David, told reporters.
Californians Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler, who’ve been friends since childhood, were awarded France’s highest honor, the French Legion of Honor, on Monday by President Francois Hollande.
“Internet connections carried out from this phone also demonstrated that Ayoub el Khazzani… had in fact looked at a YouTube film which tried to encourage people to fight and defend the prophet”.
“And I was going to use my shirt at first, but I realised that wasn’t going to work, so I just stuck two of my fingers in the hole, found what I thought to be the artery, pushed down and the bleeding stopped”. Speaking as he left the Elysee, Norman said it was “a little bit hard to believe that it’s actually happened”.
“You gave us a lesson in courage, in will, and thus in hope”.
Two U.S. servicemen, one in the Air Force, another who recently served in Afghanistan in the National Guard, and their friend who is a student, tackled and disarmed the gunman with the help of a Briton, winning trans-Atlantic kudos.
Stone, who was injured in the attack, had his arm in a sling at today’s ceremony, and his eye was bruised.
We offer our humble thanks to all four men.
The gunman has been identified by police as Ayoub El Khazzani, a 25-year-old Moroccan.
They said luck played a role.
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And his goal? The prosecutor put it in stark terms: El Khazzani, the prosecutor said, was “attempting to kill a whole train full of people”.
