What makes the muskrat guard his musk?
Yesterday, unarmed men took on a terrorist armed with a Kalashnikov in Belgium, on a train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. Today, the story is HISTORY… hard to find on news pages… replaced by stories of how many “butts in seats” some blowhard politician managed to fill.
At first, authorities had no idea what happened. The “fog of war….”
Later, since the men included two with a military history, reporters got it wrong and said that the men were Marines. After all, it HAD to be some fearless, highly trained military personnel, like the Marines, the Special Forces, the Navy Seals,…. Right?
Wrong. Dead wrong.
“My friend Alek (Skarlatos) yells, ‘Get him,’ so my friend Spencer (Stone) immediately gets up to charge the guy, followed by Alek, then myself,” Anthony Sadler said in an interview with CNN.
“I begin to tie him up with help from Chris, another passenger. I notice a man had his throat cut at which Spencer begins to apply pressure to the neck wound before he bled out.”
Spencer was cut in the head and neck and almost had his thumb cut off, Alek’s brother, Peter Skarlatos told CNN. Alek had taken control of the rifle and hit the suspect in the head with the muzzle, the brother said.
Like the heroes aboard United Airlines Flight 93, who also rushed terrorists to defend others, the men on the train in Belgium did what needed to be done, without regard for their own safety. They were “average men,” and they stopped a bloody massacre on a train in Belgium, a country with fields where MANY average men are buried, beneath crosses, row on row.
Stone and Sadler live in Sacramento, California, not far from where I am writing this, and Skarlatos is from Roseburg, Oregon. CNN continues:
Despite his wounds, Spencer was able to help the injured passenger, who was hurt in the neck, by applying first aid to stop the bleeding, Norman said.
Cazeneuve said a dual French-American citizen sustained a gunshot wound as he was in his seat aboard the train.
A third injured person was French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who has a light hand injury, said Blondeau, the spokesman for Arras.
The train was rerouted to Arras, 115 miles (185 km) from Paris, where the suspect, who was taken alive, was transferred from Arras police to the anti-terrorist police unit and France’s external intelligence agency, the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE).
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Saturday in Paris that the French passenger, whose name wasn’t immediately known, was the first to intervene, followed quickly by the Americans.
Norman said the Frenchman accosted the gunman in car 12, and that’s when the gunman took out all of his weapons and ran to car 13, where Norman and the Americans were sitting.
The suspected attacker was armed with a Kalashnikov assault weapon, nine chargers, a Luger automatic pistol, a 9mm charger and a box cutter, Cazeneuve said.
If the identity claimed by the suspect is confirmed, “it would correspond to that of an individual of Moroccan nationality, who is 26 years old, flagged by Spanish authorities to French intelligence services in February 2014, due to his ties to the radical Islamist movement,” Cazeneuve said.
The heroic men were honored in statements by French President François Hollande, Prime Minister Manual Valls, U.S. President Barack Obama, and General Philip Breedlove, commander of the U.S. European Command.
CNN has exclusive cellphone video from aboard the train, which I found difficult to access.
There are those who talk, and there are those who act.
(Blog Update, August 23, 2015: CLARITY in events like this can come DAYS later, or not at all. This CNN article has been edited with the following information and more:
Of the Americans, two are U.S. servicemembers. Spencer Stone serves in the Air Force and Alek Skarlatos is a member of the Oregon National Guard. The third American is Anthony Sadler, a college student.
Four people were hurt in Friday’s melee — including Stone, who was cut by the attacker. He was released from the hospital on Saturday. A passenger suffered a gunshot wound, another suffered cuts to his neck and a fourth badly hurt his hand while breaking the glass to pull the emergency brake.
The suspect was identified as Ayoub El Khazzani, a Moroccan national whose DNA was already on file with Spanish authorities, French media reported, citing French official sources. A senior European counterterrorism official told CNN the suspect was linked to investigations into radical Islamist networks.
The identify of El Khazzani’s was established through DNA analysis and matches the DNA records Spanish authorities had on file, according to French media.
The gunman was likely linked to a group of French ISIS fighters in Turkey, the official told CNN. The group is believed to have previously directed an Algerian student to launch attacks in Paris, according to the official)
-Bill at
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