Fast-train rescuers accept France’s top honor

By Vince Chadwick

Hollande says passengers’ helped avoid ‘carnage.’

France awarded three Americans and a Briton who tackled a suspected jihadist on a crowded train between Amsterdam and Paris the Legion of Honor — the nation’s highest award — on Monday.
The ceremony at the Elysée Palace in Paris was also attended by the U.S. ambassador to France, Jane Hartley, and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.

French President François Hollande told the rescuers that, “Faced with the evil called terrorism there is a good, that’s humanity. You are the incarnation of that.”
Hollande said by risking their own lives the men had helped to avoid “carnage.”
Ayoub el-Khazani, a 25-year-old Moroccan, boarded the high-speed Thalys train in Brussels last Friday, armed with an AK-47 rifle, automatic pistol and box cutter. As the train continued south he emerged from a bathroom carrying the rifle but was wrestled to the ground by Alek Skarlatos, 22, a National Guardsman, and Spencer Stone, 23, who is in the U.S. Air Force.
Stone and Skarlator then subdued the gunman with the aid of their travel companion Anthony Sadler, 23, from California, and Chris Norman, 62, from Britain.
Stone told the assembled media how he woke up from a deep sleep on the train and turned around to see el-Khazani holding an AK-47.
“It looked like it was jammed or it wasn’t working and he was trying to charge the weapon, and Alek just hit me on the soldier and said ‘Let’s go!’ And [I] ran down, tackled him. We hit the ground, Alek came up and grabbed the gun out of his hand, while I put him in a choke hold. It seemed like he just kept pulling more weapons left and right. Pulled out a handgun, Alek took that. Took out a box cutter started jabbing at me with that. We let go. All three of us starting punching him while he was in the middle of us. And then I was able to grab him again and choke him unconscious while Alek was hitting him in the head with the pistol or rifle. I can’t really remember.”