Two Brown University students endured unimaginable trauma during a deadly campus shooting, marking their second encounters with school gun violence. Mia Tretta, 21, and Zoe Weissman, 20, survived prior attacks but faced fresh horror when a gunman opened fire in the Barus & Holley engineering building during final exams.
Incident Details
The brown university attack on Saturday left two dead and nine injured, with the suspect—a man in dark clothing—still at large as law enforcement swept Providence, Rhode Island. Students barricaded themselves in dorms and classrooms amid active shooter alerts, reliving national nightmares of gun violence.
Survivors’ Past Traumas
Tretta was shot in the abdomen at Saugus High School near Los Angeles in 2019, where a 16-year-old killed two, including her best friend, before dying by suicide. Weissman, then 12, witnessed the 2018 Parkland, Florida, massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School next to her middle school, which claimed 17 lives.
Emotional Impact
Weissman called the event “infuriating,” feeling “12 again” and outraged at reliving it eight years later. Tretta, who stayed in her dorm instead of studying at the shooting site, echoed that no one expects it twice, fueling her advocacy for change.
Broader Context
The shooting reignites gun control debates amid 389 U.S. mass shootings this year per the Gun Violence Archive. Both survivors now channel fear into activism, highlighting repeated trauma’s toll on mental health.