[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

As a man shopped with his wife in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx on Friday, a woman stepped up to them and said she hated white people. Then she attacked, kicking the man and spraying him with pepper spray, the police said.

The next day, the same person, who is black, approached a man and a woman in the same neighborhood, asked the woman if she was white and then immediately sprayed her in the eyes.

On Saturday, police arrested Thomas Heard, a 37-year-old from the Bronx who identifies as a transgender woman, and charged her with multiple hate-crime felonies and misdemeanors in connection with the two attacks.

Police were also questioning Ms. Heard, who also goes by the name Tasha, about seven similar pepper spray attacks in Manhattan on Friday, which were committed by a woman matching her description.