In unprovoked cases, a 32-year-old woman assaulted two women she didn’t know on St. Paul’s University Avenue, including pulling one to the ground and punching her in the head, prosecutors said Monday.

Ebony Monique Steward told police she assaulted the 40-year-old woman “because she was a ‘white girl in the hood,’ and she doesn’t like or trust white people,” according to the criminal complaint.

The victims apparently didn’t have serious injuries.

Steward told a police investigator that “she has anger management problems” and she hit one of the women “because she’s a white person (in) a black neighborhood,” the complaint said. “She said that she was trying to help the white girl because she would probably come across someone who knew how to punch better or someone who might kill her.”

The complaint gives the following account of what happened:

Police were called to an assault at 2 p.m. Friday at TJ’s Nails, 590 W. University Ave. A 29-year-old woman reported she was walking out of the nail salon when Steward punched her in the eye. Police saw the woman’s eye had some swelling and bruising.

The woman said she’d never seen Steward before “and had no idea why she assaulted her,” the complaint said.

Steward was still there and she said she punched her “because she can’t stand it when ‘b—-s’ are in her way,” and the woman had been in her way, the complaint said.

She also said the woman was “strutting her (expletive) around and her boyfriend was in the area,” the complaint said. “She added that she doesn’t like light-skinned people.” The victim was a light-skinned black woman.

Officers told Steward to leave the area.

A short time later, the same officers went to a call in the same area. They were leaving the parking lot next to Hook Fish & Chicken, 600 W. University Ave., and saw Steward pull a woman to the ground next to a car in the parking lot and punch her in the back of the head.

When the officers intervened, Steward complied with their commands to put her hands behind her back, and they handcuffed her.

Witnesses said they saw Steward punch the woman several times in the back of the head in an unprovoked assault. The woman reported she had been leaving the restaurant when Steward attacked her. She said she tried to get to her vehicle, but Steward pulled her to the ground, stood over her and punched her again in the back of the head.

The woman said she’d never seen Steward before. She said her neck and head were sore from the attack.

Steward allegedly made comments about why she’d assaulted the woman as officers drove her to the Ramsey County jail. She said, “Get that white b—- out of my yard, out of the hood,” the complaint said, adding that Steward “continued to comment during the ride that she hates white people.”

Steward told an investigator that neither victim tried to fight back.

“She added that ‘they’ should give her some anger management pills, but they don’t,” the complaint said.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged Steward with two counts of fifth-degree assault. They were charged as felonies because of her history of assault convictions.

Prosecutors did not charge Steward with assault motivated by bias, a gross misdemeanor.

“Based on the facts of this case as presented to us, we charged the defendant with the highest-level felony crimes applicable and appropriate to the defendant’s behavior,” Dennis Gerhardstein, the county attorney’s office spokesman, said in an email. “From a practical standpoint, evidence of racial bias as a separate criminal charge has little or no significance in a prosecution involving felony-level conduct.”

If Steward is convicted and prosecutors can prove racial bias beyond a reasonable doubt, the county attorney’s office could ask for a longer sentence, Gerhardstein said.

Steward was convicted of fourth-degree assault on police officers in April and October. She also has four prior fourth-degree assault convictions from 2005 through 2007 and a fifth-degree assault conviction from 2007.

The complaint said Steward’s address was unknown; a jail log listed her address as the Dorothy Day Center, a homeless shelter in downtown St. Paul.

Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.