WASHINGTON — Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone, who helped subdue an attacker on a French train in August, was stabbed in California and is in stable condition, an Air Force spokesman said.
The spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Karns, said details are sketchy but that Stone is being treated in a hospital in the Sacramento area. The stabbing is being handled by local law enforcement officials.
Stone was stabbed four times in an altercation outside a bar while he was with a female companion, sources told CBS News.
Stone was defending a friend when he was stabbed in the upper torso, Fox 40 reported, citing anonymous law enforcement sources.
The Sacramento Police Department released information on a stabbing that was reported shortly after midnight Wednesday but wouldn’t identify the victim. The department posted to Twitter that the incident wasn’t “related to a terrorist act.”
In a statement posted to Facebook, the police said the victim, identified as a man in his 20s, was out with a group of friends when an altercation led to the man being stabbed multiple times in the upper body.
The police said on Twitter that alcohol was believed to be a factor in the incident.
The police said in its statement that the victim sustained what appeared to be non-life-threatening injuries.
Stone, 23, and two of his childhood friends from Sacramento, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler, stopped a gunman on a Paris-bound passenger train in August, receiving worldwide accolades and gaining sudden celebrity.
Ayoub El-Khazzani, a man with ties radical Islam, had boarded the train with a Kalashnikov rifle, a pistol and a box cutter.
A British businessman and a French-American also have been praised for their efforts to stop the gunman.
Skarlatos posted a tweet in support of Stone Thursday.
President Obama met with the three Americans last month, praising them for their quick thinking and courage and calling them “the very best of America.” They previously had been awarded France’s highest honor by President Francois Hollande.
The three have appeared on late-night talk shows and received a hometown parade in their honor since subduing the attacker while vacationing in Europe.
Stone, who has been acclaimed for his aggressive role in disarming the gunman, had undergone medical treatment at a military base in Germany for a lacerated thumb and other injuries he suffered in the attack. He is assigned to Travis Air Force Base in California.
Skarlatos is scheduled to appear on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” which he was rehearsing for when a gunman killed nine people at the Oregon community college he attends last week.
