A young Malian migrant, who saved a four-year-old child hanging from a fourth-floor balcony of a building north of Paris after scaling the facade with his bare hands, will be made a French citizen, President Emmanuel Macron said Monday.
Mamoudou Gassama, who met with Macron after a video of his rescue went viral on social media, will also be offered a place in the fire brigade, the president added.
"Bravo," Macron said to Gassama during the meeting in a gilded room of the presidential Elysee Palace that ended with the awarding of a medal from the prefecture for "courage and devotion."
People have called the 22-year-old a real spider man for climbing up from balcony to balcony.
The young man said he has papers to legally stay in Italy, where he arrived in Europe after crossing the Mediterranean after a long, rough stay in Libya. But he wants to join his older brother, who has lived in France for decades.
On Sunday, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo praised the heroism of the Malian immigrant.
"Congratulations to Mamoudou Gassama for his act of bravery that saved the life of a child," Hidalgo said on her official Twitter account, adding that she spoke with him by phone to thank him.
French minister and former government spokesman Christophe Castaner also took to Twitter to say how admirable it was that Gassama stepped forward to save a life without giving any thought for his own.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that Gassama was walking by when he saw a gathering in front of the building and leapt into action.
"I did it because it was a child," the paper quoted him saying. "I climbed... Thank God I saved him."
Gassama felt fear when he took the child into the apartment. "I was trembling," he told Macron during their one-on-one meeting Monday.
"Because this is an exceptional act ... we are obviously, today, going to regularize all your papers," Macron told him, "and if you wish we will start nationalization procedures so you can become French."
