The North Carolina man arrested late Wednesday for allegedly threatening a mass shooting at a New Orleans festival is a former law enforcement officer whose family reported he was seeking to harm “Black people,” according to an intelligence bulletin from a North Carolina police department.
Christopher Gillum, 45, was detained at a Destin hotel on Wednesday night, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said. He is wanted in Orleans Parish for terroristic threats and is accused of planning to travel to a festival in New Orleans to commit a mass shooting and then commit suicide by cop, officials said.
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is set to start its first weekend on Thursday.
“Jazz Fest is grateful to all law enforcement partners for their dedication and exceptional service in protecting our community. As always, we coordinate closely with the FBI, Louisiana State Police, NOPD, NOCEM, and other agencies, and we will continue to do so as we look forward to another safe and joyful Jazz Fest,” festival organizers said in a statement.
The Louisiana State Police confirmed Thursday that a suspect was arrested as part of an ongoing investigation with the FBI. Following Gillum’s arrest, an FBI spokesperson said only that there are no outstanding “direct threats to any festivals in Louisiana.”
Gillum’s arrest followed a hurried investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies spanning three states.
Police in Burlington, North Carolina, issued the intelligence bulletin asking for help locating Gillum, saying he was considered a missing person and flagged as potentially seeking to harm himself. Project NOLA, the New Orleans nonprofit that operates a network of crime cameras, alerted Louisiana State Police of the threat after the tip reached the network’s “fusion center” at LSU-New Orleans, Project NOLA CEO Bryan Lagarde said. Officials said a vehicle registered to Gillum was spotted by a license plate reader in Okaloosa County multiple times on April 21.
Gillum was located by Okaloosa County deputies Wednesday, but officials said he did not present any grounds for criminal charges or involuntary commitment. During the encounter, Gillum allegedly told officers he planned to drive to New Orleans on Thursday morning.
Family members told law enforcement that Gillum was carrying a Glock handgun and had recently expressed the race-related threats, according to the bulletin.
Okaloosa County deputies later arrested Giillum at a Destin hotel, finding him with a handgun and 200 rounds of ammunition.
Gillum bounced between a pair of North Carolina law enforcement agencies in the years before his arrest.
The Chapel Hill Police Department confirmed he was an officer there from 2004 to 2019. In 2023, he went to work for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office as a detention officer, a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said. Gillum returned to the Chapel Hill Police Department as a non-sworn employee the next year. He was hired again by the Sheriff’s Office in January of 2025, this time as a deputy, spokesperson Alicia Stemper said.
Stemper said Gillum resigned from the agency in September with a clean record. “There is nothing disciplinary in his file,” she said.
The Sheriff’s Office even recognized Gillum as its “officer of the month” last summer, lauding him in a Facebook post for exercising “attention to detail” while investigating a gas station robbery. Gillum located a “single latent fingerprint on a coffee cup” the robber touched before committing the crime, the post says.
“This print allowed us to identify and arrest the suspect when security footage did not capture usable images,” it reads. “Well done, Deputy Gillum!”
While he was an officer in Chapel Hill, Gillum saved a man who tried to hang himself outside a downtown club in 2009, a newspaper report says.
Aaron Gillum, a former deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office accused of plotting a mass shooting in New Orleans, seen in a July, 2025 Facebook post in which he was recognized as “deputy of the month” at the agency.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY ORANGE COUNTY (NORTH CAROLINA) SHERIFF’S OFFICE
Gov. Jeff Landry commended the law enforcement agencies for their collaboration in a Thursday interview with WDSU. He said securing New Orleans has been a priority since the 2025 Bourbon Street terrorist attack, which left 14 dead after a suspect sped down the famous strip in a truck.
“Since the terror attack last year, we treat the protection around the city very importantly … We are going to continue to ramp up our security to protect people,” Landry said.
A 43-page consulting report released after the attack recommended that city officials make broader plans to improve road barriers and communication between law enforcement agencies.
Though no specific recommendations were made for the city’s festivals, including Jazz Fest, NOPD has ramped up security measures over the last year for large-scale events.
Jazz Fest was set to have 220 officers patrolling streets in the Fairgrounds neighborhood over the festival’s two weekends and large concrete barriers have been set up near the festival gates.
Police and festival organizers did not say whether any additional measures would be put in place following the thwarted attempt.