Amy and her husband Joe were sitting quietly on the Amsterdam-Paris Thalys train Friday evening when the window behind her was shattered by a bullet, showering her with glass. Another passenger, Damien, was reading a magazine when he heard what he
"A guy fell on the ground and blood was everywhere, apparently he was hit in the neck." Pressed to the floor of the carriage, she quickly began snapping pictures on her smartphone -- images that swiftly went around the world. "I thought there was
Christina Cathleen Coons, an American tourist, said she had been in carriage 12 when the shots rang out. "I heard gunshots, probably two, and a guy collapsed," she recounted.
"Then the man, who was bare-chested, returned to carriage 12 and someone in a green T-shirt, with a shaved head, saw him and jumped on him and pinned him to the ground." The entire scene, he said, "did not last more than fifteen seconds".
In Arras, stunned passengers waited to speak to police as the Red Cross distributed bottled water. "The man stopped between two carriages, fired and it made a click-click-click sound, not at all like in the films," Damien told AFP.
Ten minutes later the train stopped at Arras, where police arrested the shooter, described by French investigators as a 26-year-old from Morocco or of Moroccan origin also armed with an automatic pistol and a box cutter.
Two people were wounded in the struggle, including, according to the Pentagon, a member of the US military, though it was not clear if they were the same people who had subdued the gunman.
"I thought it was a toy," the still-shocked 35-year-old told AFP. What followed was fifteen seconds of confusion and chaos. A gunman armed with a Kalashnikov had opened fire on the high-speed train, carrying more than 550 passengers -- but, almost
Gunman opens fire in France train, US Marines come to the rescue