Children Falling From Flaming Building Caught By Heroes 30 Feet Below

Jul 24, 2020 by apost team

A group of community members in the French city of Grenoble saved two young brothers from an apartment fire after they dropped from a 30-foot-high window this Tuesday. The two boys, ages 10 and three, were unharmed from the fall thanks to a crowd gathered below that caught the pair after they fell.

Athoumani Walid, a 25-year-old student, was among the crowd that helped to save the falling children. According to the Associated Press, Walid rushed to help after he heard screams from a nearby apartment complex. Walid, who joined around four or five other people, helped catch the two brothers when they fell from the building. Because of the impact, Walid suffered a broken wrist.

“We didn’t know what to do,” Walid told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “We wanted to break the door but it wasn’t possible.”

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Walid added that he hoped that news of the rescue would help people overlook stereotypes of the Villeneuve neighborhood of Grenoble in south-east France, which has a large immigrant population and is thought to be a dangerous area.

“We are told it’s a ‘sensitive’ neighborhood,” Walid told the Associated Press, “but yesterday we showed we are here for each other, and we save each other.”

The mayor of Grenoble, Éric Piolle, released a statement on Tuesday congratulating the residents of the Villeneuve neighborhood.

“I would like to congratulate the residents of Villeneuve who today carried out a heroic rescue of two children trapped in their burning apartment. Hand in hand, they enabled the two little ones to escape unharmed from this tragedy,” Piolle wrote in French on Facebook.

Since the news broke on Tuesday, a dramatic video of the rescue has been circulating on the internet and several news outlets have picked up the story.

The Guardian reports that a similar incident took place in France in 2018, when a man from Mali, Mamoudou Gassama, rescued a child from a balcony in Paris. Footage of the rescue showed Gassama running to pull the child to safety while onlookers cheered from below. The French state offered honored Gassama by inviting him to the Elysée Palace and offering him French citizenship. Politicians and the media also began to refer to him as the “Spider Man of Paris.”

The two brothers involved in this week’s rescue escaped uninjured, though they were hospitalized due to smoke inhalation, along with 17 other apartment residents. At the time of writing, the cause of the fire and the parents’ whereabouts are unknown, according to French media.

What a brave group of people. What do you think about this heroic story? Have you ever seen anything like it? Let us know, and make sure to pass this incredible video on to others.