Terror attack on the train: Americans rescue the French, again

Last updated on: August 22, 2015 at 2:12 pm by Jane the Actuary

Terror attack on the train: Americans rescue the French, again 2015-08-22T14:12:03-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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You’ve likely seen this in the news: a Moroccan armed with an AK-47, a pistol, and a boxcutter on a train crossing from Belgium to France was stopped by vacationing American soldiers, before he could begin shooting.

Here’s a link to

the New York Times: ” The two American service members who tackled a suspected terrorist on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris rushed him even though he was fully armed, then grabbed him by the neck and beat him over the head with his own automatic rifle until he was unconscious”), and

CNN, in which the role of a Frenchman, who unsuccessfully rushed the gunman before the Americans, is featured in the headline — “Americans, French national tackle, overpower suspected Islamist gunman on train.” Per the text,

A “French passenger tried courageously to overpower him before the suspect fired several shots, then two American passengers intervened and managed to overpower the shooter, immobilized him on the ground and put aside his weaponry,” [French Interior Minister Bernard] Cazeneuve said.

Later text describes the details. Three American friends were travelling together when they saw people running, then the gunman.

“My friend Alek Skarlatos yells, ‘Get him!,’ so my friend Spencer Stone immediately gets up to charge the guy, followed by Alek, then myself,” said Anthony Sadler, the civilian among the three. Stone is an Air Force member while Skarlatos is in the National Guard.

“The three of us beat up the guy,” Sadler said. “In the process, Spencer gets slashed multiple times by the box cutter, and Alek takes the AK away.”

The New York Times reports that the men heard the gun being loaded in the bathroom and decided to take action, but this seems to have been incorrect — and it seems to me that I also read that they saw the gunman in Belgium and thought he was suspicious so followed him, but the article I thought I read that in, at the Daily Mail, doesn’t say so and perhaps has removed these statements since I originally read this last night.

And here’s Le Monde, which tells pretty much the same story.

And here’s Ann Althouse, who reads the comments at the Times, and observes that the second-most-liked comment claims that because these unarmed Americans were able to subdue the gunman, it’s proof that we don’t need to allow civilians to bear arms for safety.

(One further item that I’m not sure of: I’ve read several reports now, and others last night, and there’s mention that the AK-47 wasn’t functional, but I can’t find any statements to that effect any longer, so perhaps that was additional false, early information.)

So:

This is an extraordinary story. It’s hard to fathom just how deadly this could have otherwise been — a shooter with a kalishnikov and 9 magazines shooting up train cars. The heroic actions of the Americans (and the unsuccessful but equally heroic Frenchman) aside, Europe is at risk for terrorist attacks even more than the U.S., and we can’t dismiss them as “lone wolves.” The shooter had been identified by the French and the Spanish as terrorist-linked, though there’s no additional information yet on his background; he’s identified as Moroccan (or, according to Le Monde, “of Moroccan origin”) but with no further information on for how long he’s lived in Europe, or where.

And: of the actors involved (and I don’t mean the French actor mildly injured), the three who saved the day were Americans. In fact, the Daily Mail reports a passenger claim that “the staff hurried towards their own car on the train and opened it ‘with a special key’ before they locked themselves inside.”

My first reaction is just “wow.” Was it the military training of two that let them to act so quickly and do the seemingly-insane? Is there something about the American culture in general, that means that we’re more likely to act? (But then: there are plenty of counter-examples, of shooters where everyone runs and hides.) We worry about our young men, and the fact that their testosterone seems out of place in the year 2015, and yet —

How many similar stories will we be reading in the future, vs. stories without the happy ending? This isn’t going to go away, either in Europe or in the U.S., either in the form of Islamic terrorism, or the “crazed shooter” version.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse features a comment that says, “see, we don’t need guns to stop bad guys.” Now this seems to be a thing, as my facebook news feed now has several people saying things like “The only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is. . . . guys without guns” and ” But they took down the gunman WITHOUT having any weapons themselves, and no one died.”

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