Racist beachgoer takes kid's football and goes on hammer rampage after teens confront him

A Massachusetts man attacked a group of teenagers with a hammer after they took back a football he'd swiped from a child.

Witnesses said 24-year-old Gianpaolo Cerretani took the football from a child playing Sunday afternoon at Revere Beach, and a group of black and Hispanic teens confronted him, reported WBZ-TV.

The teens grabbed the football and gave it back to the child -- and that's when Cerretani went berserk.

Witnesses said Cerretani became enraged and started swinging a hammer at the teens while shouting racial slurs at them.

An 18-year-old from Lowell suffered minor injuries in the hammer attack, but he refused medical treatment.

The group of boys and young men managed to subdue Cerratani until state troopers arrived to arrest him.

State police said Cerretani turned his racist anger against them as troopers took him into custody.

He screamed racial slurs at troopers and called them pigs, and threatened to fight them.

Cerretani was taken to an area hospital for treatment of several cuts on his head, and he hurled another racial slur against a black security guard there.

He was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault with a dangerous weapon, a civil rights violation, threats to commit a crime, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest.

Cerretani, who refused to tell police why he had a hammer at the beach, remains held on $1,040 cash bond.

Watch this video report posted online by WBZ-TV: