Spencer Stone was dozing off when a gunshot startled him awake. This wasn’t a nightmare or the sound of a car backfiring outside. It was a real gunshot, just thirty feet away on a train. He opened his eyes to shattered glass and a train worker sprinting down the aisle — away from something. That something was a shirtless man wielding a rifle. Stone had no strategy. He had about two seconds to come up with one. That’s when his childhood friend Alek Skarlatos nudged him and said the only thing that mattered. "Let's go." Stone didn’t hesitate. He sprang up and charged straight at the gunman. Skarlatos was already on the move behind him. Their other friend, Anthony Sadler, followed closely behind.
Let’s rewind a few minutes. It was August 21, 2015. Thalys train 9364 was racing through the French countryside at nearly 300 kilometers per hour, somewhere in the Pas-de-Calais region, carrying 554 passengers from Amsterdam to Paris. Among them were Spencer Stone, 23, an Air Force medical technician; Alek Skarlatos, 22, an Oregon Army National Guard specialist just back from Afghanistan; and Anthony Sadler, a college senior at Sacramento State — sitting together as old friends from a small Christian school in Fair Oaks, California, who had spent months planning this European trip. Little did they know that a 25-year-old man named Ayoub El Khazzani had boarded that train with a Kalashnikov-style Draco carbine loaded with a 30-round magazine, eight additional spare magazines in his backpack, a handgun, a bottle of gasoline, and a box cutter. Nearly 270 rounds of ammunition. On a train. At full speed. With nowhere for anyone to escape.
The first individual to confront him was Mark Moogalian, a 51-year-old French-American professor. Moogalian bravely wrested the rifle away — a true act of valor — but El Khazzani pulled his pistol and shot him, critically injuring him. Moogalian fell to the floor, bleeding profusely. That was the gunshot that roused Spencer Stone.
Stone reached the attacker first and put him in a chokehold. El Khazzani didn’t go down easily. He brandished the box cutter and slashed at Stone repeatedly — across his neck, through his eyebrow, nearly severing his thumb. Stone also broke a finger and sustained an injury to his eye. He held on regardless. Skarlatos seized the rifle from the struggle and struck El Khazzani in the head with it. Sadler moved in to help pin him down. A 62-year-old British businessman named Chris Norman rushed over to assist in restraining the attacker’s hands. An off-duty French train driver, whose name remains undisclosed, joined in as well. Together, five strangers turned allies managed to subdue and render him unconscious. Only later did they discover something that shifts your perception of the entire event: El Khazzani's rifle had jammed, and his pistol was out of ammunition with no magazine. Neither firearm could actually fire at that moment. None of the men fighting him were aware of that.
With the attacker subdued, Stone turned to the man who had been shot — Mark Moogalian, still bleeding on the train floor, the wound tearing through his back, chest, and neck. Stone attempted to wrap his own shirt around the injury. It wasn’t adequate. So he did something most people rarely have to do outside of a training scenario: he pressed two fingers directly into the wound in Moogalian's neck to apply pressure on an artery. He remained there — keeping a stranger's life intact with his own hands, while bleeding heavily from his own neck and thumb wounds — until the train reached Arras and French paramedics took over. Moogalian was airlifted to a hospital in Lille. Stone received treatment near Lille and later at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. All 554 passengers on that train arrived at their destination safely.
Recognition followed quickly. Just three days after the attack, French President François Hollande personally awarded Stone, Skarlatos, Sadler, and Chris Norman the Legion of Honor — France’s highest award. Back home, President Obama honored the three friends at the Pentagon. Stone received the Airman’s Medal and a Purple Heart. Skarlatos was awarded the Soldier's Medal, the Army's top honor for actions beyond combat. Sadler received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Valor. Belgium honored Stone and Sadler with its Civic Medal First Class for Bravery. In 2019, all three were granted honorary French citizenship during a ceremony in Sacramento. French investigators later confirmed that El Khazzani had intended to carry out a mass killing, stating it was retaliation for bombings in Syria. In December 2020, a French court convicted him of attempted terrorist murder and sentenced him to life in prison.
Heroism doesn’t have an off switch, and the aftermath was challenging. Just weeks later, in October 2015, Stone was stabbed multiple times outside a bar in Sacramento in an unrelated event — wounds that reached his heart, lung, liver, and back. He survived that as well. In 2016, he left the Air Force at the rank of Staff Sergeant, a rank he had earned through his actions on that train. Their story was adapted into the 2018 film, The 15:17 to Paris, directed by Clint Eastwood and based on a book the three friends co-authored with journalist Jeffrey E. Stern. In a rare decision, Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler portrayed themselves. Skarlatos later won a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives. Sadler completed his education and became a public speaker. Stone pursued international relations and now advocates for veterans and speaks motivationally.
