Hero ‘Spiderman’ Climbs 4 Stories to Rescue Child Dangling From Balcony

A man is being hailed as a hero after he scaled a building in just seconds to save a child who was dangling off of a balcony, with the resulting video going immediately viral.

Mamoudou Gassama told BFM TV that he was watching a football game at a Paris, France restaurant when he heard a commotion, making his way outside where he quickly noticed the child and realized what was happening.

Video captured Gassama leaping into action, scaling the building’s facade amid cheers from the gathered crowd before making his way to the balcony where neighbors were struggling to pull the child to safety.

Parisian emergency services soon arrived at the scene to find that the child had already been saved.

Gassama arrived in France from Mali just months ago, according to a tweet by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. She also delivered a personal phone call to Gassama and referred to him as the “Spiderman of the 18th,” in reference to the district of Paris where the incident took place.

“I saw all these people shouting, and cars sounding their horns. I climbed up like that and, thank God, I saved the child,” 22-year-old Gassama told reporters the day after the incident, according to The Guardian.

“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,” she added.

According to judicial sources, the child’s parents were not home at the time. The 4-year-old’s father was later held for questioning and was determined to have been out shopping at the time the child was saved, and the mother was not in Paris at the time. The father is no longer in custody but is due in court in September, and the child has been placed in care, according to a spokesman for the Paris prosecutor.

Since the harrowing incident, Gassama has been offered a job by the fire brigade and will be made a French citizen, CNN reports. Gassama met with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, where he was given a certificate and a gold medal for performing an act of courage and dedication.

“I didn’t think about it, I climbed up and God helped me,” the 22-year-old told Macron of his heroic, adding that the child “was crying because he was hurt.”

The Paris fire brigade tweeted that Gassama “shares the values of the Paris fire brigade. We are ready to welcome him.”

Photo Credit: Facebook / Habib Bibou