A Malian immigrant has earned the nickname "Spiderman" as well as a French citizenship after rescuing a four-year-old boy who was hanging from a fourth-floor balcony in Paris.
Mamoudou Gassama, 22, drew international attention after he was captured on video last Saturday dramatically scaling the facade of the building to rescue the toddler.
The footage showed Gassama climbing up from one balcony to another with his bare hands until he reached the toddler, while a man on the fourth floor tried to hold on to the child.
The heroic act prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to award him with a medal of courage and offer him a job in the fire service.
Additionally, Macron also offered to start the naturalization process to make Gassama a French citizen.
"You saved a child. Without you, no one knows what would have become of him. You need courage and the capability to do that," the French president said, as reported by CBS News.
"Because this is an exceptional act ... we are obviously, today, going to regularize all your papers," he continued.
During his meeting with Macron, Gassama recounted the events that led to the daring rescue. He narrated that he was walking by when he came upon a crowd in front of a building.
"I just didn't have time to think, I ran across the road to go and save him," Gassama told the President, according to BBC.
Gassama, who came to France in 2017 from his home country of Mali, says God helped him with the rescue.
"I just climbed up and thank God, God helped me. The more I climbed the more I had the courage to climb up higher, that's it," he said.
Macron, who has introduced a measure to strengthen France's immigration law, insisted that there was no contradiction between his stance to prohibit immigrants from entering the country illegally and his decision to reward Gassama with citizenship. "An exceptional act does not make policy," he told reporters, according to CBS News.
Gassama told the President that he had been allowed to stay legally in Italy, where he initially landed in 2014 after staying in Libya for over a year and crossing the Mediterranean Sea. The migrant said that he was arrested and beaten in Libya.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo commended the Malian migrant for the heroic rescue of the toddler and dubbed him the "Spiderman of the 18th," referring to the 18th arrondissement of Paris, where the incident took place.
The boy's father was reportedly detained and charged with parental neglect after apparently leaving the child unattended to go shopping. The father is due to appear in court in September, according to CBS News.
