‘Spider-Man’ scales building in Paris to rescue a child
PARIS — The 4-yearold boy seemed to be suspended from a balcony. An adult standing on a nearby balcony 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 Spider-Man of the 18th, referring to the arrondissement 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. His exploits were captured on video.
Finally, after scaling four balconies, 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 polarized debate about outsiders, immigrants and refugees.
The man, identified as Mamoudou Gassama, 22, is a migrant from Mali who arrived in France in September, without documentation.
On Monday, he met with President Emmanuel Macron. Now, he will get the requisite documentation to live legally in France.
“I told him that in recognition of his heroic act he would have his papers in order as quickly as possible,” Macron said in a statement on Facebook after meeting with Gassama at the Élysée Palace.
Gassama will be one of a lucky few in a country with increasingly tight immigration rules.
In 2017, only five people were granted residency papers for “exceptional talent” or “services rendered to the community,” according to statistics from the French Interior Ministry.
The boy saved by Gassama was alone in the apartment while his father went grocery shopping, said François Molins, the Paris prosecutor.
Molins told the BFM television news channel that the father had taken a long time to return home because he had decided to play the smartphone game “Pokémon Go” as he was leaving the store.
The father was taken into police custody Sunday, and an investigation has been opened for “failure to meet parental obligations.” The father has been released pending trial.
As for Gassama, he told the newspaper Le Parisien that he was with his girlfriend and wanted to go watch the Champions League soccer final Saturday evening when he came across a commotion around 8 p.m.
“I saw all these people shouting, and cars sounding their horns,” he said. “So I crossed the road to go save him.”
“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.”