Man accused of plotting racist killing in New Orleans released after grand jury declines to indict
TheGrio...
Christopher Gillum now faces no charges after authorities said jurisdictional issues complicated the Louisiana case.
The man who authorities said intended to travel to New Orleans and kill Black people has been free since June, and the public is only learning of it now.
WWL Louisiana reported that court records show Christopher Gillum, 45, walked out of the Orleans Justice Center on June 25 after a state grand jury declined to indict him on a terrorizing charge.
He had been held without bond following extradition from Florida. Sources told the station he faces no charges in any other jurisdiction, a detail his attorney, Dylan Utley, confirmed.
Attorney General Liz Murrill attributed the outcome largely to jurisdiction. The threats relayed to a family member occurred in North Carolina, she told WWL, and Gillum never crossed into Louisiana before his arrest.
His family had also taken him to an out-of-state treatment facility. Murrill still credited law enforcement with stopping him, saying they successfully prevented him “from carrying out whatever it was he was planning, wherever he might have been planning to carry it out.”
The allegations themselves were stark. According to an arrest affidavit cited by the outlet, Gillum told his cousin the night before his April arrest that he planned to travel to New Orleans on April 23 to “take care of business” and “kill a Black person,” adding that family should “just wait and see what happens.”
The cousin, a former law enforcement colleague, said Gillum had called days earlier while intoxicated, describing thoughts he characterized first as “bad,” then “dark.” In another call, he allegedly said he had retrieved a gun from a storage unit.
Deputies arrested him at a Destin, Florida hotel after relatives requested a welfare check, recovering a handgun and roughly 200 rounds of ammunition from his room.
The arrest landed on the eve of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, though officials never publicly named a target. Utley disputed reporting that tied his client to the festival, calling those accounts inaccurate and saying the grand jury reached the correct conclusion.