66 year-old Nicholas Cooper was taken into custody for assaulting Kris Kane, 38, after an unnamed young girl confided in him. She said that she ‘wanted to tell Santa a secret’ and that ‘all she wanted was for her stepdad to stop touching her at night’.

Kane was waiting by the side of the Southridge grottos for his stepdaughter to finish talking to Santa. And when he saw the fake bearded and red suited Cooper come towards him, he thought he was in for a chat about what gifts she wanted… But he couldn’t have been more wrong.“

Santa didn’t say nothing. He just grabbed the back of the guy’s skull and headbutted him REAL hard,” an eyewitness said. “Then Kringle got on top of him and just started pummeling him. He was laughing and screaming ‘Ho! Ho! Ho! Motherf*cker!’ over and over again. It was damn surreal.”

The witness goes on: “That ain’t even the damnedest thing, though. While Santa’s punching the cr*p out of this guy, three or four of his little elves ran over and started kicking him. I mean, they’ve only got little legs – but they were aiming for his head. He was NOT left feeling very festive after that!”