Bloke Who Scaled Building To Save Child Offered Citizenship & Firefighting Job

Elysee PalaceFirst things first: if you haven’t seen the video of 22-year-old Mamoudou Gassama using an extraordinary level of upper-body strength to rescue a child hanging from a balcony, pump this immediately into your eyeballs:

Gassama undertook the extraordinary rescue in Paris on Saturday, after noticing a commotion outside while he was watching a soccer game at a restaurant.

Obviously, the ridiculous feat garnered a lot of attention, earning Gassama praise and a phone call from Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, and an invite to Elysee Palace to have a chat with French president Emmanuel Macron. At the palace, Gassama was awarded a certificate and a gold medal for bravery.

Gassama, an undocumented immigrant from Mali, was also offered French citizenship by Macron, in addition to a job with a French fire brigade.

Speaking to BFM TV, Gassama said he just acted without thinking:

I like children, I would have hated to see him getting hurt in front of me. I ran and I looked for solutions to save him and thank God I scaled the front of the building to the balcony.

What a bloody legend.

The citizenship move is a bit of an interesting one, consider Macron’s very hardline stance on immigration, but a good outcome for  Gassama (and that baby), nonetheless.

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