Man From Mali Saved A 4 Year Old By Climbing Balconies In Paris

FlowerHair

Reclaiming my time
Now he gets a French citizenship and a medal from President Macron.

The child was hanging from a fourth floor balcony and a neighbor tried to hold on to the child, when Gassama saw the child and decided to climb up there. In less than one minute, he had climbed four floors up and rescued the child.

 

FlowerHair

Reclaiming my time
An article from NY Times:
‘Spiderman,’ a Migrant in Paris, Scales Building to Save a Child
Image

President Emmanuel Macron of France meeting with Mamadou Gassama at the Élysée Palace in Paris on Monday. Mr. Gassama scaled four stories of a building in the French capital to save a young child hanging from a balcony.CreditPool photo by Thibault Camus


By Alan Cowell and Aurelien Breeden

  • May 28, 2018
  • The child seemed to be suspended from a balcony. An adult standing nearby seemed powerless to help. Disaster seemed the only possible outcome.


Then, to the nimble rescue on the streets of Paris on Saturday evening, came a young man whom some French people have started to call the Spiderman of the 18th, referring to the area of Paris where the episode unfolded.

With a combination of grit, agility and muscle, the man hauled himself hand over hand from one balcony to another, springing from one parapet to grasp the next one up. A crowd that had gathered before he began his daring exploit urged him ever upward, according to onlookers’ video that was shared widely on social media.

Finally, the man reached the child and pulled him to safety. And suddenly, an act of individual courage and resourcefulness began to play into Europe’s fraught and polarized debate about outsiders, immigrants and refugees.
The man, identified as Mamadou Gassama, is a migrant from Mali, a troubled former French colony in northwest Africa. Mr. Gassama had yearned to secure the requisite documentation to live legally in France, and his dream came true on Monday after a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron.

“I told him that in gratitude for this heroic act he would be given legal status as soon as possible,” Mr. Macron said in a statement on Facebook after meeting with Mr. Gassama at the Élysée Palace in Paris.

Mr. Macron added that the Paris firefighters were “ready to welcome” Mr. Gassama into their ranks, and he said that he had “invited” Mr. Gassama to apply for French citizenship.

Mr. Gassama will be one of a lucky few. In 2017, only five people were granted residency papers for “exceptional talent” or “services rendered to the community,” according to statistics from France’s Interior Ministry. In 2016, there were six.

The meeting with Mr. Macron came after the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, also called to thank him for his “act of bravery.”

“He explained to me that he had arrived from Mali a few months ago, dreaming of building his life here,” the mayor said on Twitter. “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.”

Even the anti-immigrant National Front party offered to support Mr. Gassama’s bid for residency — but only in return for the expulsion of all the other migrants living in France without official consent.

As for Mr. Gassama, he told French reporters that his act of courage had left him shaken. “I saw all these people shouting, and cars sounding their horns,” he said. “I climbed up like that and, thank God, I saved the child.”

“I felt afraid when I saved the child,” he said, according to French news reports. “I started to shake, I could hardly stand up. I had to sit down.”
 

nysister

Well-Known Member
Awesome! Parkour has nothing on him. I'm happy for his new citizenship. That was the way for the government to handle it, here he would have been arrested at best.

We are honest-to-goodness real life superheroes. No wonder we're hated.

Our skin and eyes that protect us, our muscles, our ability to know just what to do when, and despite anything that tears us down, we never give up.

I'd be scared if I were them too.
 

Pat Mahurr

Pun intended
He is an exceptional person indeed. Good that he was rewarded with something he valued. Split-second, impulsive heroes fascinate me. I’d like to know more about him.
Re the bolded, I had to go back and look. :lol:
And a BLACK man saves the day, an excellent climber! He was fast and worked it.

Did anyone notice the person, at the bottom of the video, who unsuccessfully tried to climb the fence?
 

Pat Mahurr

Pun intended
Maybe they can send the father to Mali — just to keep the numbers even.

“According to initial inquiries by the authorities, the child's parents were not at home at the time.

The father was later held for questioning by police for having left his child unattended and was due in court later, a judicial source said. The child's mother was not in Paris at the time.“

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-...hero-mamoudou-gassama-mali-migrant-spiderman/




Amazing. Thank God this man was there to save that child. Where the hell was the kid parents???
 

King of Sorrow

Well-Known Member
It seems the father went out to run some errands and upon leaving the store decided to play Pokémon Go, delaying his return.:rolleyes: The child has been returned to him as the child welfare services has not found an immediate danger to the child and he is on bail but he will have to go before the courts in September and faces two years in prison for neglect of parental obligations. The wife does not live in continental France. She and the rest of the family still live in La Réunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean.

I'm confused. From the video it looks like someone else was on the balcony. Am I seeing things? If so why didn't they pull the kid up?

It was the neighbor, reaching across the barrier between the two balconies. Gassama had started climbing up before the neighbor came out and it looked the neighbor was close to safely pulling the kid in when Gassama reached him.

If that man isn't married, he is about to be.
 

Shimmie

"God is the Only Truth -- Period"
Staff member
It seems the father went out to run some errands and upon leaving the store decided to play Pokémon Go, delaying his return.:rolleyes:

:huh: How old is this father? Is he a teenager? He sure has the mind of one who stop and play a game and not consider being responsible for the child's safety being alone. I wouldn't be surprised if he's in the habit of leaving the child alone...to 'run errands and such'.
 

TCatt86

Well-Known Member
Wait, who leaves a 4 year od alone?? I go into the bathroom for 5 minutes and my 3 year old is diving off couches and tables and conducting 'experiments'. How could they leave a 4 year old alone???

I can't even leave my toddler to go to the kitchen. I went to the kitchen to get water came back not even a minute later. He waa standing on the dining room table.
It seems the father went out to run some errands and upon leaving the store decided to play Pokémon Go, delaying his return.:rolleyes: The child has been returned to him as the child welfare services has not found an immediate danger to the child and he is on bail but he will have to go before the courts in September and faces two years in prison for neglect of parental obligations. The wife does not live in continental France. She and the rest of the family still live in La Réunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean.



It was the neighbor, reaching across the barrier between the two balconies. Gassama had started climbing up before the neighbor came out and it looked the neighbor was close to safely pulling the kid in when Gassama reached him.

If that man isn't married, he is about to be.
Who leaves a 4yr old in the house alone? Are the rules different in France. This is illegal in the U.S.
 

King of Sorrow

Well-Known Member
:huh: How old is this father? Is he a teenager? He sure has the mind of one who stop and play a game and not consider being responsible for the child's safety being alone. I wouldn't be surprised if he's in the habit of leaving the child alone...to 'run errands and such'.

37 years old. :wallbash:

The papers are reporting that after Gassama reached the top and pulled in the kid he found the balcony door was locked. That better have been a self-locking door...


EDIT: It seems he lives on the 6th floor and fell down to and was holding on to the balcony on the 5th Floor... This story gets crazier by the hour.
 
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Pat Mahurr

Pun intended
People are so different in their responses to adrenalin. Gassama saw the child and reacted by scaling the building. Someone else reacted by recording. I’m sure others just stood by gasping, holding their breath, unable to look away, feeling helpless, afraid, etc. even though they were full of adrenalin. Their hearts reached out, but their bodies didn’t move.

I think it’s a rare and really divine set of circumstances when a person is present, physically able, willing to help and chooses to disregard their personal safety to save a stranger. When it happens, it doesn’t even look like a choice they make— it’s like they couldn’t stop if they tried.
 

DST1913

Well-Known Member
It seems the father went out to run some errands and upon leaving the store decided to play Pokémon Go, delaying his return.:rolleyes: The child has been returned to him as the child welfare services has not found an immediate danger to the child and he is on bail but he will have to go before the courts in September and faces two years in prison for neglect of parental obligations. The wife does not live in continental France. She and the rest of the family still live in La Réunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean.



It was the neighbor, reaching across the barrier between the two balconies. Gassama had started climbing up before the neighbor came out and it looked the neighbor was close to safely pulling the kid in when Gassama reached him.

If that man isn't married, he is about to be.

Got it. From my angle looks like he could have easily grabbed him but I guess maybe there was a partition. That kid is strong as heck to hang on for so long and smart to not let go.
 
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