A Florida man who pleaded guilty to a hate-motivated attack on a Muslim U.S. Postal Service carrier was sentenced Friday to three years in federal prison.

Kenneth Pinkney, 47, of Fort Lauderdale, was ordered to serve 37 months behind bars followed by three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said in a statement.

“No one should live in fear of being targeted because of their religious beliefs,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Davis said said in the attorney’s office statement. “Everyone, including federal employees, have the right to carry out their duties safely.

Pinkney’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night. The victim was not identified.

Prosecutors said Pinkney displayed an aggressive demeanor toward the carrier while she was delivering mail in Broward County on Oct. 9, 2023, two days after Hamas militants’ incursion into Israel, a day that would spark war and rekindle religious and ethnic divisions across the globe.

The carrier, identified only as a 47-year-old woman of Muslim faith, took note, prosecutors and investigators said in the criminal complaint filed against Pinkney.

On Oct. 24, as the uniformed woman was about 2 and a half hours into her delivery day and near her USPS delivery truck, Pinkney approached her as he rode a bicycle and made a hand gesture that indicated a gun aimed at her, according to the complaint.

At first, the woman said, she thought the man needed something and she asked if she could help, according to the complaint, which was bolstered by an affidavit from an FBI special agent.

The man stopped and repeatedly said she should leave the country before tapping the back of her head with two fingers in the gesture of a gun, the complaint alleged. “Go back to your country,” the defendant allegedly told the carrier, according to the U.S. attorney’s statement on Friday.