Two students caught up in the deadly shooting at Brown University had earlier survived separate school shootings in the United States. Mia Tretta, 21, was shot in the abdomen during a 2019 attack at Saugus High School near Los Angeles, while Zoe Weissman, 20, witnessed the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Weissman, who was 12 when the Parkland attack killed 17 people, said she was in her dormitory at Brown when a friend called to warn her of gunfire. ‘I’m angry that I thought I’d never have to deal with this again, and here I am eight years later,’ she told NBC News. Tretta had initially planned to study in the building where the shooting took place but changed her mind because she felt tired.
The attack on Saturday left two people dead and nine injured, with the suspect still at large after hundreds of police searched the campus and surrounding areas. Both survivors expressed shock that they had experienced such violence again. ‘People always think, well, it’ll never be me. And until I was shot in my school, I also thought the same thing,’ Tretta told the New York Times.
The incident has renewed debate over gun control in the US, where the Gun Violence Archive reports 389 mass shootings so far this year. ‘The one thing that gave me comfort was, like, statistically, it’s practically impossible for this to ever happen to me again,’ Weissman said. ‘And clearly, we’re getting to a point where no one can say that any more.’
