PARIS — The three American friends who helped foil a mass shooting on a packed high-speed train on its way to Paris started the trip in a different car, they said Sunday, underlining how narrowly their triumph could have been a tragedy.
When they got on the train in Amsterdam, they could not find their first-class seats, so they sat in a nearby car, said Anthony Sadler, one of the three vacationing childhood friends who have been lauded as heroes by President Barack Obama and French President François Hollande. “We decided to get up because the WiFi wasn’t so good on that car,” Sadler said. “We were like, ‘We have a ticket to first class. We might as well go sit in first class.’ “
About half an hour after the train pulled away from Amsterdam, they switched to the car where the shooter, a short time later, opened fire, he said. Along with two other men, they tackled, then disarmed, a suspected Islamist militant.
The men — friends since middle school in California — appeared together in public on Sunday for the first time since they overpowered the shooter.
