Watch CBS News

New U.S. hero emerges from train attack

LANDSTUHL, Germany -- The welcoming party was a modest affair for a returning hero, but U.S. Airman Spencer Stone, with mom Joyce Eskell by his side, looked happy to be back with his family Tuesday -- his real one, and his military one.

Along for the ride and to offer support on the way to Landstuhl, Germany, where the U.S. Army has its largest overseas military hospital, was Stone's buddy Alek Skarlatos, a National Guardsman himself.

American heroes were "ready to fight until the end" 02:34

Both men, and American civilian Anthony Sadler Jr., another friend who was travelling with Skarlatos and Stone, have been lauded as heroes for thwarting the attack on the train on Friday, but as CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata reports, it was a fourth U.S. national who first set upon the gunman.

Lying wounded himself in the intensive care unit of a French hospital Tuesday morning was Virginia native Mark Moogalian, the man who wrestled the AK-47 from suspected gunman Ayoub el-Khazzani.

Moogalian's wife Isabella told French radio her husband became suspicious when the man brought a case into the train bathroom.

"He saw that he was armed," she said, "so he said to me 'move away, it's serious.'"

When Mooglian snatched the weapon, the gunman opened fire with a sidearm, hitting the American who has lived for years in France in the neck.

"He looked at me and said... 'I'm hit, I'm hit. It's all over,' he told me," Mooglian's wife said, choking up. "He thought he was going to die. There was blood everywhere."

But it wasn't over. Stone, his left thumb almost completely cut off by the gunman with a box cutter, did what he was trained to do as a military medic.

"He was squirting blood out of the left side or right side of his neck," recalled Stone at a weekend news conference in Paris. "I just stuck two of my fingers in the hole and found what I thought to be the artery, pushed down and the bleeding stopped."

Stone, Skarlatos, Sadler and a British businessman who joined the fray to help subdue the attacker were awarded Monday the Legion of Honor -- France's highest honor -- by President Francois Hollande.

D'Agata says Mooglian and an as-yet-unnamed French passenger who also helped out will also receive awards for their bravery at a later date.

An official at Landstuhl told CBS News Tuesday morning that Stone would be treated at the base for the laceration to his thumb, an non-critical injury to his eye and other minor cuts and scratches.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.