AP/Michel EulerSecurity officers escort released hostages after they stormed a kosher market to end a hostage situation, Paris, Friday, Jan. 9, 2015. Explosions and gunshots were heard as police forces stormed a kosher grocery in Paris where a gunman was holding at least five people hostage. A Muslim employee of the Kosher market in Paris where hostages were being held by a terrorist helped hide several people and a baby in a freezer downstairs as the seven-hour siege began, Metronews reported Saturday.
After the Islamist gunman Amedy Coulibaly stormed in to Hyper Cacher on Friday, 15 or so people ran downstairs to the store's basement.
That is when the 24-year-old employee Lassana Bathily, who is from Mali, had the idea to hide people in the market's freezer.
"I opened the door of the freezer and a number of people went inside, I turned off the lights and the freezer," Bathily told MetroNews.
As he closed the door to secure the hostages inside, he told them, "Stay calm here. I'm going out."
Bathily managed to escape from the store using an elevator, alerting French police to the hostages hiding in the freezer as he fled.
The young employee is being hailed across social media as a hero, and received thanks from the hostages after they were freed.
Malian Muslim employee Lassana Bathily - hid over a dozen hostages at the Paris kosher supermarket saving their lives pic.twitter.com/XhcKHF9qzf
- omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) January 10, 2015
A true hero of the hostage crisis in the kosher grocery store yesterday, 24-year old Lassana Bathily managed to... http://t.co/dWFecZkJi2
- #worldwithjan (@worldwithjan) January 10, 2015
Meet Lassana Bathily, another Muslim hero in the ongoing French tragedy: http://t.co/td6a44Dyy2 #JeSuisAhmed
- Brian Gluckman (@bgluckman) January 10, 2015
Respect à Lassana Bathily, gros respect.
- Alvs (@Jo95zey) January 10, 2015
Lassana Bathily, un Mensch #Vincennes... http://t.co/90dpF3CkMD
- Jewpop (@jewpopblog) January 10, 2015