Spencer Stone, one of three Americans hailed a hero in the French train attack in August, had his condition upgraded from serious to fair Friday and could get out of bed after being attacked outside a California bar.
Eric Cain, a worker at A&P Liquors, told KTXL he thought what he was witnessing was just another bar fight early Thursday morning.
"Next thing I know, I start walking back in the store and I hear a pow, like someone got hit so I turn back around and that's when it started running in the street," Cain told the station.
Cain said he realized one of the men involved was stabbed but he didn’t know who he was.
"It looked like he was protecting the girl because there was girls and guys and after the fight they all just kinda dispersed," said Cain.
The next morning, the victim turned out to be Stone.
Stone was out with four friends when they got into a fight near a bar with another group of people, Sacramento Deputy Police Chief Ken Bernard said.
"We know it's not related to what occurred in France," Bernard said.
The deputy chief didn’t disclose what sparked the argument but said there’s no evidence the assailants knew who Stone was.
Stone, 23, was knifed three times in the upper body and expected to survive after about two hours of surgery, said Dr. J. Douglas Kirk, chief medical officer at UC Davis Medical Center.
A grainy surveillance video from a camera outside a liquor store shows a large man who appears to be Stone fighting against a half-dozen people at an intersection as cars as onlookers pass by.
The group spills into the street as people take swings at each other, and the man who appears to be Stone knocks one person down before another man strikes at his back.
Police said two assailants fled in a car. No immediate arrests were made.
Sacramento Police Sgt. Doug Morse said Friday police interviewed a 24-year-old woman who was also hurt in the fight and was treated at a hospital for abrasions.
"We're really hoping that additional witnesses or anyone involved comes forward," Morse said. "Right now detectives are working around the clock to clarify all that stuff. It would be way too premature to discuss what witnesses saw."
Bernard said he did not know whether Stone was drinking but noted that others in his group were.
Kirk said Stone remained heavily sedated in the intensive care unit. He declined to discuss any details about the surgery or whether any vital organs were damaged in the stabbing, beyond saying Stone had "significant injuries."
The airman was conscious when he arrived at the hospital.
"I suspect given his history of recent events he is quite a fighter," Kirk said.
Doctors expect Stone to fully recover. Stone's family asked Kirk to convey their gratitude for all the expressions of concern they had received.
The incident comes after Stone and two of his childhood friends from Sacramento, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos and college student Anthony Sadler were vacationing in Europe when they sprang into action aboard a Paris-bound passenger train and tackled Ayoub El-Khazzani, a man with ties to radical Islam. He had boarded the train with a Kalashnikov rifle, pistol and box cutter.
Stone, who is assigned to Travis Air Force Base in California, suffered a severely cut thumb and a knife wound to his neck during the struggle with the gunman.
President Barack Obama met with the three Americans last month, and they have been awarded France's highest honor.
Stone is the second of the three Americans to be shaken by violence at home since their return.
Last week, Skarlatos left rehearsals for TV's "Dancing With the Stars" to rush back to Roseburg, Oregon, after a gunman killed nine people at the community college that Skarlatos attends.
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