A Douglasville woman was surprised as anybody when she heard her brother helped prevent a massacre by grabbing an AK-47 from a heavily-armed man who had opened fire on a European train carrying more than 500 passengers.

“To know that he could think that calmly, and make that decision with split seconds, blew me away,” Jacqueline Moogalian-Pittman told Channel 2 Action News.

Her brother, Mark Moogalian, was one of five people credited with subduing the suspected gunman, identified by French authorities as Ayoub el-Khazzani.

Monday, the men were made Chevaliers of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor. Moogalian, 51, could not make the ceremony. Shot in the back with a handgun during the rescue, he was in the hospital recovering.

Moogalian-Pittman said the actions of her brother, who has dual French-American citizenship and was heading home to Paris from Amsterdam, saved lives.

“I don’t know how he did it,” Moogalian-Pittman told Channel 2. “You’re in a situation where there’s nothing but panic, chaos and fear.

“But it is Mark.”

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