Ex-Officer Held in New Orleans Shooting Plot Is Freed Without Indictment

A former North Carolina police officer who was accused of planning to carry out a mass shooting in New Orleans was quietly released over the summer after a grand jury did not indict him, according to state court records.

The former officer, Christopher Gillum of Chapel Hill, N.C., had been held without bond in Louisiana on a state terrorism charge that carried up to a 15-year sentence. He was not believed to be facing any other charges, according to prosecutors and his lawyer.

Mr. Gillum, 45, was arrested in April in Florida after law enforcement authorities determined that he had planned to travel to a large festival in New Orleans to carry out a mass shooting and “commit suicide by cop,” officials said.

Sheriff’s deputies in Okaloosa County, Fla., arrested him on a Louisiana warrant. They recovered a handgun and about 200 rounds of ammunition from his hotel room, they said at the time.

Mr. Gillum, who has been investigated by the F.B.I. and the authorities in Louisiana, North Carolina and Florida, was extradited to Louisiana from Florida shortly after the arrest. He had been held at a local jail without bond.

His lawyer, Dylan Utley, said in an interview on Wednesday that the reports against Mr. Gillum “were unfortunate and inaccurate.”

Mr. Utley said that “the facts in this case did not support the specific threat to the people of New Orleans and the people of Louisiana that was originally reported.”

It’s unclear when he was freed, but court records show that an Orleans Parish grand jury declined to indict him in June. His release was first reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

“To our best understanding, his family took him to a treatment facility out of the state,” Lester Duhé, a spokesman for the Louisiana attorney general, Liz Murrill, said in a statement. He added that the state would not pursue further charges.

Read more: New York Times