Moral Courage

 

In the midst of horror in Paris, man risks own life to save pregnant woman dangling from window

By Dave Andrusko
Like hundreds of millions of others, last Friday my wife and I watched the horror unfold as ISIS terrorists massacred 129 people and wounded at least 350 more in coordinated attacks throughout Paris.
What we had missed until yesterday was the heroism of a man later identified as Sebastian Besatti, who risked his own life to save a pregnant woman (identified only as Charlotte) who was dangling from a ledge 20 feet from the ground.

A journalist for the French newspaper Le Monde caught the drama on film.
“The video was recorded by a journalist in a nearby building,” ABC News reported. “The journalist, Daniel Psenny, stopped recording to go help but did capture the moment when someone from inside the building is able to help pull the mother-to-be back inside as she says that she begins losing her grip.”

That “someone,” of course, was Sebastian Besatti. The 34-year-old Besatti was attending the same concert as Charlotte was where the murderers butchered 89 defenseless people.
Besatti, like many members of the audience, had sought a hiding place as the men methodically killed one person after another. Charlotte tried to escape the Bataclan theater through the window. He saw her hanging from the roof, pleading for help from helpless bystanders below.
“At one point in the video you hear her speak out in French, ‘Please, I’m pregnant,’” NBC News reported. “Then after what seemed like a lifetime, someone [Besatti] comes to her rescue and pops their head out of the window and pulls the woman inside.”
Initially, he did not know what happened to her.

He was then captured by one of the terrorists and went through a harrowing ordeal as the terrorists continued to kill his fellow concert-goers. Miraculously he survived until police raided the theatre and was able to escape.
Later Besatti’s brother saw an announcement via Twitter that Charlotte’s family, asking that the man who save her come forward so they could thank him for saving Charlotte and her unborn child.
“After the message was widely shared, Sebastian’s brother spotted it,” according to Bonny Fuller. “He then connected the two together.”

Asked by radio station France Bleu Gard Lozère why he risked his own life by coming out of his hiding place to save Charlotte and her baby, Sebastian said because “it’s not possible to let someone die in front of you — there had already been too many.”

Source: NRLC News