A certain young Malian leaped into action to save a four-year-old child dangling from a fourth-floor balcony by single-handedly scaling the frontage of the building and hauling the youngster to safety.
Not considering his own safety, Mamoudou Gassama took just seconds to reach the child in a remarkable rescue captured on film and viewed millions of times on social media.
The occurrence took place at around 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) on Saturday in northern Paris.
Clip of the rescue shows Gassama, 22, pulling himself up from balcony to balcony with his bare hands as a man on the fourth floor makes effort to hold on to the child by leaning across from a neighbouring balcony.
On reaching the fourth-floor Gassama puts one leg over the balcony before reaching out with his right arm and grabbing the child.
Firefighters arrived at the scene to find the child had already been rescued.
According to initial investigations by the authorities, the child’s parents were not at home at the time.
The father was later held for questioning by police for having left his child unattended and was due in court later, a judicial source said. The child’s mother was not in Paris at the time.