Three Americans, including two off-duty service members, are being praised as heroes after apprehending a suspected terrorist on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. The Americans rushed the suspect and knocked him unconscious with his own AK-47, the New York Times reports.

Two of the men were Alek Skarlatos, an Oregon National Guardsman returning from Afghanistan, and Spencer Stone, a member of the Air Force. When the gunman entered their train car carrying an AK-47 and a handgun, “I looked over at Spencer and said, ‘Let’s go,’” Skarlatos said in a televised interview in France. “And he jumped, I followed behind him by about three seconds. Spencer got the guy first, grabbed the guy by the neck, I grabbed the handgun.”

The Times reports that the suspect cut Stone severely in the neck and hand. His injuries are not life threatening.

“My friend Alek yells, ‘Get him,’ so my friend Spencer (Stone) immediately gets up to charge the guy, followed by Alek, then myself,” the third American, Anthony Sadler, told CNN. “The three of us beat up the guy,” Sadler said. “In the process Spencer gets slashed multiple times by the box cutter, and Alek takes the AK away.”

“I begin to tie him up with help from Chris, another passenger. I notice a man had his throat cut at which Spencer begins to apply pressure to the neck wound before he bled out.”

The suspect, identified as a 26-year-old Moroccan man, also wounded several other passengers, including a dual French-American citizen, the Associated Press reports.

The suspect’s identity has not been 100 percent confirmed, the AP reports. An anonymous Spanish anti-terrorism source told the news agency that the gunman lived in Spain until 2014, when he moved to France, traveled to Syria, and then returned to France.

According to the Times, French media reported that the suspect denied having terrorist aims, intending merely to rob the train’s passengers.

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.