What a Hero Looks Like

By now the story is well known. On the evening of Friday, August 21st, three Americans, Spencer Stone, 23, Alek Skarlatos, 22, and Adam Sadler, 23, childhood friends on holiday in Europe, were snoozing on a Paris-bound train when they heard a noise like shattered glass and turned to see a man enter the carriage with an assault rifle. Several things happened in an instant: "I saw [the gunman] had an Ak-47 and it looked like it was jammed – he was trying to charge the weapon," Stone told reporters. "Alek just hit me on the should and said 'Let's go!" and I ran down, tackled him, Alek ran up and grabbed the gun out of his hand while I put him in a chokehold." The gunman, a 25-year-old Moroccan, Ayoud El-Khazzani, fought back, pulling weapon after weapon, including a box-cutter which he used to slice at Stone, wounding him in the neck and hand. Meanwhile Sadler, following his buddies into the fray, "beat [the shooter] until he was unconscious."