Two survivors of Brown University attack escaped other school shootings | US news
As the deadly attack unfolded at Brown University, leaving students hiding under desks and staggering as gunshots rang out, the scene was eerily familiar to at least two students.
Years earlier, Mia Tretta, 21, and Zoe Weissman, 20, both survived school shootings. “What I felt most was, how dare this country allow this to happen twice to someone like me?” Weissman told the New York Times.
Two people were killed and nine others injured Saturday after a man dressed in black opened fire during final exams at one of the most prestigious universities in the United States. Hundreds of police officers spent the night roaming the campus and nearby neighborhoods while the suspect remained at large.
Weissman was in her dorm room at Brown when a friend called to warn her that a shooting was in progress. Her initial feelings of panic quickly turned to anger, she told NBC. “I’m angry because I thought I would never have to deal with this again, and here I am eight years later,” Weissman told NBC News.
She was 12 years old when she witnessed a shooting at the high school adjacent to her middle school in Parkland, Florida. The 2018 shooting left 17 dead.
Tretta was shot in the abdomen in 2019 when a 16-year-old girl opened fire at Saugus High School near Los Angeles, killing two people, including her best friend.
“People always think, well, that’s never going to be me,” Tretta told the New York Times. “And until I was shot at my school, I thought the same thing too.”
On Saturday, she was in her dorm studying. She had originally planned to study in the engineering and physics building at Barus and Holley, where the filming took place, but changed her mind because she felt tired.
Saturday’s attack once again highlighted long-standing calls for gun control in the United States, where gun laws are among the most permissive in the developed world. So far this year, there have been 389 mass shootings in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines incidents in which four or more victims were shot. Last year, more than 500 mass shootings were reported.
On Saturday, Tretta and Weissman said they believed they would never have to experience another shooting.
“The only thing that comforted me was that, statistically, it’s virtually impossible for this to happen to me again,” Weissman said. “And clearly we’re getting to a point where no one can say that anymore.”
