A Malian migrant, Mamoudu Gassama scaled a Paris apartment block to save a four-year-old child. Gassama has been living illegally in France and workin
A Malian migrant, Mamoudu Gassama scaled a Paris apartment block to save a four-year-old child. Gassama has been living illegally in France and working in construction since arriving in September last year following a perilous journey from his homeland to Libya then Italy. He leapt into action on Saturday evening on seeing the child dangling from the fourth-storey balcony of an apartment in the 18th district.
The video shows Gassama swiftly pulling himself up from balcony to balcony to reach the boy, to the cheers of onlookers. Firefighters arrived at the scene to find the child, whose parents were not at home, had already been rescued. A shy figure, Gassama said he had acted instinctively.
“I saved the child and then went inside the building and I was shaking,” he told President Emmanuel Macron later who hailed him as an example, welcomed him to the presidential palace and offered him citizenship. He has since been nicknamed “Spiderman” by French media for his astonishing climbing ability.
