French President Francois Hollande awarded the Legion of Honor medal, France’s highest honor, to three Americans and a British citizen on Monday for tackling a gunman on Friday in a train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris.
The three U.S. citizens — Anthony Sadler, U.S. Airman Spencer Stone and National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos — and fellow British passenger Chris Norman received the award for subduing the gunman, who was armed with an assault rifle strapped to his bare chest.
“Faced with the evil called terrorism there is a good, that’s humanity. You are the incarnation of that,” Hollande told the four men during the ceremony at Elysee Palace, according to a Reuters report.
“By their courage, they saved lives,” Hollande said, according to CNN. “They gave us an example of what is possible to do in these kinds of situations.”
Another passenger, a French national who has not gone public, also confronted the gunman and will be honored at a later date, according to the CNN report.
Ayoub El-Khazzani, the 26-year-old alleged gunman, is in custody and being questioned by the French counterterrorism police outside Paris.
