A knockout reaction experiment was carried out using a 6He beam at 82.3 MeV/u impinged on carbon and hydrogen targets. The recoil protons were detected in coincidence with the forward moving charged fragments and neutrons. It is demonstrated that through the correlation between the recoil protons and forward moving charged fragments, the core fragment knockout and valence nucleon knockout reaction mechanisms can be discriminated at energies around 100 MeV/u. The 5He ground-state resonance was reconstructed based on the selection of the valence nucleon knockout mechanism. The resonance parameters were obtained for both carbon and hydrogen targets, which are consistent with those previously reported in the literature. The importance of selecting appropriate reaction mechanisms is discussed based on reconstructions using events with larger transverse momentum transfer. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd.