His trained eye immediately analysed the object. ‘It was a large knife with a 20 cm long blade and a ten centimetre long handle,’ says Nour A., a 26-year-old irregular Algerian, mimicking the length of the weapon with his two hands. Then he no longer had time to consider. He grabbed the gun and threw it through the window of the RER D regional train carriage he was travelling in on his way to work on Tuesday morning. He then managed to detain the man in a corner while he waited for the police. He was arrested a few minutes later at Vert-de-Maisons station by police officers from Maisons-Alfort police station.
[…]
He had a scary face, with a bloodshot black eye,’ Nour says. There he started talking loudly and asking me if I had a job because he was looking for a job.’ Nour broke off the conversation, but the man opposite started shouting: ‘We killed Allah’, then ‘We only have Allah’. ‘He got louder and louder. The man next to me stood up while I started putting on my headphones to listen to music,’ Nour remembers. Then he put his mobile phone aside and started singing Koran chants very loudly’. Nour turns up the volume in his headphones to gain some privacy, but can’t take his eyes off the other passenger.
He pulled a pair of shoes out of his bag, then reached in with his hand and pulled out his knife and stowed it on the seat next to him,’ says Nour, his voice getting increasingly louder. I was scared. Then he told me: ‘This is not for you. Startled, Nour stiffened ‘two, three seconds. I was thinking of knife attacks’. Nour continues: ‘The guy was behaving strangely. Without thinking, I lunged at him. He tried to stop me, but I managed to grab the knife anyway, shouted to call the police and threw the weapon away.’ After that, there is complete silence around them and Nour keeps him at bay in a corner. Le Parisien
