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Authorities say Christopher Gillum, a former law enforcement officer from North Carolina, planned to kill Black people at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and was arrested in Florida before any attack occurred, according to officials.
The Jazz Fest, commonly known as Jazz Fest, runs from Thursday through May 3, organizers said. Authorities in several states did not name the specific event in their early warnings, but the AP reported that the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival was the target.
According to the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, federal authorities told the sheriff’s office that Gillum was in the Florida Panhandle “heading to do a mass shooting at a large festival in Louisiana.” The sheriff’s office said Gillum was wanted on “terroristic threats,” and federal investigators were working with law enforcement across multiple states.
The sheriff’s office said Gillum was arrested without incident on Wednesday night at a hotel in Destin. Deputies recovered a handgun and about 200 rounds of ammunition from the hotel room, the office said.
The sheriff’s office said Gillum was taken into custody as a fugitive from justice and would be extradited to Louisiana to face charges there. It was not immediately known whether he had a lawyer, the AP reported.
North Carolina officials said Gillum’s family reported him missing on Tuesday and that he had a history of self-harm, according to Lt. Clint Lyons of the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office. Lyons said Gillum left the state before his agency could prepare paperwork to involuntarily commit him to psychiatric treatment, and that there were no criminal grounds to detain Gillum despite his comments about Black people “because there was no victim,” according to a bulletin from police in Burlington, North Carolina.
Lyons said Gillum was located and stopped by law enforcement in Okaloosa County on Wednesday, based on the same bulletin. But Okaloosa officials later described the arrest as tied to an extradition process, while the Burlington bulletin said Gillum told officers he was “enroute to New Orleans,” and that deputies were initially asked to make a “welfare check” before they learned of the more serious threats.
After the arrest, a Louisiana State Police spokesperson said, “At this time, there are no known direct threats to any festivals in Louisiana.” The FBI in New Orleans said it was working with law enforcement across the three states involved in the investigation.
Officials also described Gillum’s prior service in North Carolina. He served as a sworn police officer in Chapel Hill from 2004 until his resignation in 2019, and he later worked in Carolina Beach before leaving those roles. He became a detention officer with the Orange County sheriff’s office in October 2023 and later resigned, and he returned to the Chapel Hill police force as a non-sworn employee in 2024 before leaving again by the end of the year. He was rehired as an Orange County sheriff’s deputy in January 2025 but resigned the following September, officials said.