The Moment He Chose Everyone Else
“A gunman with 300 rounds boarded a train to Paris. One unarmed airman charged him, got slashed in the neck—and kept fighting. 554 passengers survived because he didn’t stop.
August 21, 2015. Thalys train #9364, speeding through Belgium toward Paris at 186 mph.
Spencer Stone, a 23-year-old U.S. Air Force staff sergeant, was dozing in his seat. He was on vacation, backpacking through Europe with two childhood friends from Sacramento—Alek Skarlatos, an Oregon National Guardsman just back from Afghanistan, and Anthony Sadler, a college student.
They were supposed to be relaxing. Seeing Europe. Making memories.
Then a man emerged from the bathroom carrying an AK-47 assault rifle.
Ayoub El Khazzani, a 25-year-old Moroccan with ties to radical groups, had boarded in Brussels. He’d hidden an AK-47, a Luger pistol, a box cutter, 270 rounds of ammunition, and a bottle of gasoline in a backpack.
He stepped into the train car and opened fire.
The sound of gunfire in an enclosed train car is deafening, disorienting, terrifying. Passengers screamed. Some dove under seats. Others pressed against windows. A French-American passenger, Mark Moogalian, lunged for the rifle and was shot in the back.
El Khazzani struggled with the weapon—it jammed—and pulled out his pistol.
He was 10 feet from a train car packed with 554 people. He had 270 rounds. He had time. The train was moving at nearly 200 mph. Escape was impossible. Police were minutes away at best.
This could have been a slaughter.
Spencer Stone woke to the sound of gunshots.
His training kicked in before conscious thought. He was a medical technician, trained in combat casualty care, drilled on reacting to threats. But he wasn’t armed. He had no weapon. No body armor. No backup.
He had seconds to decide: hide and hope, or act.
Stone stood up, looked at Skarlatos, and without a word, they moved.
Stone charged.
Not tactically. Not carefully. Just ran full speed down the aisle at an armed terrorist who’d already shot someone.
This is the moment most people don’t understand about heroism: it’s not brave. It’s instinctive. Stone didn’t calculate odds or weigh survival chances. He just moved.
El Khazzani saw him coming and fired.
The pistol misfired.
Stone closed the distance in seconds. He grabbed El Khazzani in a headlock and dragged him to the ground. The two men fought in the narrow aisle—El Khazzani thrashing, Stone trying to control him.
Then El Khazzani pulled out the box cutter.
He slashed at Stone’s face, neck, hands—anywhere he could reach. The blade opened Stone’s neck, cutting deep into muscle and arteries. Blood sprayed across the floor. Stone’s thumb was nearly severed.
Stone didn’t let go.
Skarlatos arrived and grabbed the AK-47, repeatedly striking El Khazzani with it while trying to figure out how to clear the jam and shoot him if necessary. Sadler joined, helping restrain the thrashing attacker. British consultant Chris Norman, a 62-year-old businessman, also rushed in to help.
The four men—one bleeding heavily, one holding a jammed rifle he couldn’t fire, two untrained civilians—pinned down a trained militant who’d planned mass murder.
El Khazzani kept fighting. He was strong, desperate, determined. They struggled for what felt like forever but lasted maybe 90 seconds.
Finally, they got him facedown. Skarlatos put him in a chokehold until he went unconscious. They tied him up with belts and a necktie.
The threat was neutralized.
Then Stone collapsed.
Blood poured from his neck wound. He’d severed an artery. In combat, this is a “”golden hour”” injury—you have maybe 60 minutes to get to surgery or you die. On a train moving 186 mph through rural Belgium, there was no surgery.
But Stone was a medical technician. Even bleeding out, training took over.
He put his thumb inside his own neck wound and compressed the artery. Held pressure. Focused on staying conscious.
Then he saw Mark Moogalian, the French-American who’d been shot trying to stop the gunman. Moogalian was lying in the aisle, bleeding from his back, his wife screaming beside him.
Stone—barely conscious, holding his own severed artery closed with one hand—crawled to Moogalian and began treating him.
With one hand in his own neck and the other checking Moogalian’s wounds, Stone assessed the gunshot. Through the back, possibly through the lung. Moogalian was gasping, fading.
Stone kept him talking. Kept him breathing. Applied pressure. Did everything his training demanded while simultaneously bleeding out himself.
Other passengers helped. A French doctor took over compressing Stone’s neck wound. The train made an emergency stop in Arras, France. Paramedics stormed aboard.
Stone was rushed to a hospital in Lille, barely alive. Surgeons worked for hours. They’d later tell reporters that Stone should have died—the neck wound was millimeters from being fatal, and the blood loss alone should have killed him before reaching the hospital.
But he survived.
When Stone woke up hours later, groggy from anesthesia and blood transfusions, his first words were a question:
“”Did anyone else get hurt?””
The medical staff stared. He’d nearly died. His thumb was mangled. His neck was sliced open. And he was asking about everyone else.
They told him: Mark Moogalian survived. Two other passengers had minor injuries. But because of Stone, Skarlatos, Sadler, Norman, and Moogalian’s initial confrontation, no one else had been shot.
El Khazzani’s plan had been to execute as many people as possible, then ignite gasoline to set the train on fire. He had 270 rounds. He had a packed train car. He had time.
Instead, he got off maybe three shots before Spencer Stone tackled him.
554 passengers walked away because three guys from Sacramento and a British consultant decided that stopping a terrorist was more important than surviving.
The aftermath was surreal. French President François Hollande awarded all three Americans—Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler—the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest honor. President Obama received them at the Pentagon. They did interviews, talk shows, met world leaders.
Stone deflected every time someone called him a hero. “”I just did what anyone would do,”” he’d say.
But that’s a lie everyone who does something extraordinary tells themselves.
Most people wouldn’t. Most people couldn’t.
When gunfire erupts, human instinct is freeze, flee, or hide. Fight is the rarest response. Fighting when unarmed against someone with 270 rounds is nearly unheard of.
Stone didn’t hesitate. Didn’t calculate. Didn’t wait for someone else to act.
He just moved.
That’s not “”what anyone would do.”” That’s what almost no one does—and what everyone hopes someone will do when they’re trapped on a train with a terrorist.
In 2018, Clint Eastwood made a film about the incident, The 15:17 to Paris, starring Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler as themselves. It was strange casting—untrained actors playing themselves—but it captured something important: these weren’t action heroes. They were ordinary guys who did an extraordinary thing.
Stone later medically retired from the Air Force due to his injuries. He struggled with PTSD and adjustment to civilian life. Heroism doesn’t come without cost.
But on August 21, 2015, for 90 seconds on a speeding train, Spencer Stone was exactly what the world needed: someone who ran toward danger when everyone else ran away.
A terrorist with 300 rounds planned to execute hundreds.
He killed no one.
Because one airman decided that sitting down while people died wasn’t an option, even if stopping it meant dying himself.
554 passengers went home to their families that night.
Spencer Stone went to surgery with a severed artery and a nearly severed thumb.
He’d asked just one question when he woke up: “”Did anyone else get hurt?””
That’s the question heroes ask.
Not “”Am I okay?””
“”Did anyone else get hurt?””
The answer was no.
Because he didn’t stop fighting.”
