Candidate for governor denies details, attacks Cranston Mayor Allan Fung as "basically a criminal" and says Fung is behind the surfacing of the long-ago incident. Fung denies Trillo's assertion.

CRANSTON, R.I — A police report describing independent gubernatorial candidate Joe Trillo’s assault on a then-12-year-old Nicholas Mattiello contradicts the description Trillo gave this week in multiple interviews.

The report, from more than 40 years ago, indicates that Trillo, who was 32 at the time, was accused of hitting Mattiello with a caulking gun during an argument over playing in the neighborhood. The witness statements from children said that Trillo threatened to beat them up for making noise and said he’d send black people, using a racial slur, to “crush your bones.”

But according to the report released by the Cranston police Friday afternoon, the future speaker of the House was “an ill-mannered, undisciplined little brat,” and an officer regretted having to charge Trillo with hitting the boy.

The victim’s name is redacted in the report, although both Mattiello and Trillo have said that the future speaker was the victim.

Trillo responded to the report's release by denying its details and calling opponent Allan Fung, Republican mayor of Cranston, "basically a criminal." Trillo vowed to stay in the governor's race just to siphon votes away from Fung.

During a week in which a poll by The Providence Journal, The Public's Radio (formerly Rhode Island Public Radio) and ABC6 showed him holding 5 percent of the vote in a contest against Fung, incumbent Gov. Gina Raimondo and others, Trillo has had to deal with old skeletons. He also admitted this week to slapping then-state Rep. Laurence Ehrhardt years ago during an argument at the State House over boat toilets. Ehrhardt said he tried to tweak Trillo's nose. The police did not get involved.

As for the 1975 arrest, Trillo said Wednesday on WPRO radio that he was reacting to Mattiello and other children banging on the door of a neighbor girl, who was screaming for them to go away. Trillo said he was waving his arms around and "inadvertently" hit Mattiello.

The police report tells a different story.

When the police pulled up on Surrey Drive on June 19, 1975, the report says, they found Trillo and another man — Mattiello's father — in a heated argument in the street.

Trillo told the police that he and his wife were working on windows on their property, when they were disturbed by children playing football. Young Mattiello, in particular, was swearing, Trillo said, using an obscenity beginning with an "F."

However, the children said that Trillo was the one who was using vulgar language. The children said that Trillo told them to shut up, called Mattiello a "punk" and hit him in the head three times with the caulking gun.

Although the police tried to let it go, Mattiello's parents wanted Trillo charged, saying, "Trillo has a reputation of hitting the neighborhood children," according to the report. Mattiello's father threatened to kill Trillo.

So police charged Trillo two days later, with this rueful observation from an officer: "There seems to be no question that Mr. Trillo did actually strike young [redacted] with a tube of caulking compound [elsewhere in the reports referred to as a caulking gun] after he had been provoked into doing so by [redacted] who is an ill-mannered, undisciplined little brat who has been a source of aggravation to the other residents of this area as well as to school authorities at [redacted].

"However, these facts do not lessen the impact of Mr. Trillo's assault on the boy, as justified as it might have been," the officer continued. "I made this known to Mr. Trillo and I made my feelings concerning [redacted] behavior and attitude known to [redacted], but I am sure my remarks fell on deaf ears as far as the [redacted] were concerned.

"Although it is against my better judgment, I felt I had no other choice but to charge Mr. Trillo with one count of simple assault."

The police told the Trillos and the Mattiello family to stay away from each other. By Jan. 3, 1977, the court had found Trillo not guilty.

Trillo said in an interview Friday with The Providence Journal that he couldn't explain why the report didn't mention the girl screaming.

"That was the whole thing that started the problem," he said.

He denied using a racial slur to describe the people he was going to have "crush" Mattiello's bones.

"And there were no black people in [the] neighborhood," Trillo added. "So, I don't know what the hell that's about at all. No idea."

Was he really known for hitting the children in the neighborhood?

"That is such a lie," Trillo said. "Produce them. Produce another child that I hit. That is ridiculous."

Trillo blamed Fung for the resurfacing of his arrest from 1975.

"This is Fung using his police department again to go after his political enemies," Trillo said Friday. "It's got his name all over it. ... Nobody would have probably been able to on their own dig up these records that, God only knows, where they were filed 40 years ago. They were on microfiche."

"He went through great lengths, but that's what Fung does. Meanwhile, he won't open up his record(s) to give us the details of when he killed the person on Route 95," Trillo continued, alluding to a fatal 1989 crash in which Fung was initially charged with driving to endanger, death resulting. Fung has said that a grand jury failed to indict him. He had a District Court judge seal records of the case in 1994 and has declined to ask for them to be unsealed.

(The Cranston police sent the report in response to an open-records request from The Providence Journal this week. Through a spokesman, Fung denied having anything to do with the release of the report.)

Asked if this effectively ends his run for governor, Trillo said: "Are you kidding? The more he aggravates me, the more it's never going to end."

Trillo said he's not going anywhere.

"I'll stay in this if I've got 2 points, as long as I take them away from him now," Trillo said. "... I don't ever want to see him become governor."

Read Cranston Police Dept. 1975 documents and statements