The video of Mamoudou Gassama's quick climbing to reach the child, cheered on by terrified onlookers, went viral on social media, with p...
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| The video of Mamoudou Gassama's quick climbing to reach the child, cheered on by terrified onlookers, went viral on social media, with people calling the 22-year-old a real spider man. Photo grabbed from a video shared on Facebook/ Habib Bibou |
By Ed Mazza, HuffPost
He’s being hailed as a real-life Spider-Man.
Mamoudou Gassama was caught on video on Saturday climbing a building in Paris to rescue a child who was dangling from a fourth-floor balcony. As the footage above shows, it took Gassama about half a minute to reach the 4-year-old and pull him to safety.
“I did not think of the floors… I did not think of the risk,” Gassama told Le Parisien, according to a translation by Nine.com.au. “I did it because it’s a child.”
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called the 22-year-old hero “Spider-Man of the 18th,” as the rescue happened in the city’s 18th arrondissement (district).
“He explained to me that he had arrived from Mali a few months ago, dreaming of building his life here,” Hidalgo told the Guardian. “I told him that his heroic act is an example to all citizens and that the city of Paris will obviously be very keen to support him in his efforts to settle in France.”
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron met with Gassama, thanked him, gave him a medal and said he would become a naturalized citizen, per the BBC.
The child’s parents weren’t home during the incident. The child’s father was held for questioning while the mother was not in Paris at the time, AFP reported.
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