On a train headed from Amsterdam to Paris, everything seemed normal as the passengers filed in and took their seats. This route’s been travelled countless times before, but on this particular day something very, very bad was about to happen.
Thankfully this train had three heroic friends on it.
Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos, and Anthony Sadler were riding the train through Belgium when they heard glass breaking and gunshots, and then an armed man entered their car. Without a moment of hesitation, they leapt into action and rushed towards him.
Spencer Stone, who works at a US Air Force base in Portugal and trains at the local Gracie Jiu-Jitcu academy, used his BJJ training to get the terrorist into a chokehold. The terrorist pulled his boxcutter, slashed Stone, blood everywhere, but it wasn’t enough to stop this hero.
This training paid off in spades.
“I grabbed the handgun, got that away from the guy and threw it. Then I grabbed the AK-47, which was at his feet, and started muzzle-bumping him in the head with it. Everybody just started beating the guy while Spencer held the chokehold until he went unconscious.” Said Alek Skarlatos in an interview with Sky News.
If it weren’t for these guys stepping up and stopping the terrorist, he would have been able to pick off everyone on the train one-by-one, there’s really nowhere to hide on a high-speed rail car. If they had hesitated for even a moment, he would have been able to take aim and things would have gone a lot differently. This is the type of confidence and quick thinking that’s often attributed to training in a martial arts discipline.
Video of the incident on the next page:
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