A 22-year-old Malian man, Mamoudou Gassama, has been hailed for his heroism after he scaled the outside of a Paris apartment building to rescue a four-year-old child hanging from a fourth-floor balcony on May 26.
“I saw all these people shouting, and cars sounding their horns. I climbed up like that and, thank God, I saved the child,” Gassama said. “I felt afraid when I saved the child… [When] we went into the living room, I started to shake, I could hardly stand up, I had to sit down,” he added, as reported by AFP.
After the rescue, Gassama was praised by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, and invited to the Elysee Palace, where he met President Emmanuel Macron. Macron said Gassama would be granted citizenship, and offered him a job with the Paris emergency services. Credit: Dandach Tarek via Storyful
