Brown University Massacre Renews Trauma For Students Scarred By Past Shootings: 'Never Thought Had To Go Through Again'

(MENAFN- Live Mint) Among the many anxious and frightened students in the aftermath of Saturday's shooting at Brown University were two who had already experienced something like this before.

Brown University junior Mia Tretta had been shot in the abdomen during a mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California in 2019. Two students were killed, and she and two others were wounded. She was 15 at the time.

On Saturday, Tretta was studying in her dorm with a friend when an initial alert came in, warning of an emergency at the university's engineering building. She assumed something serious had occurred, but never imagined it could be a shooting.

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As more alerts poured in, urging people to lock down and stay away from windows, the familiarity of the language made clear what she had feared. By the end of the day, two people were dead and nine others injured in the Providence, Rhode Island, shooting that once again upended a school campus, AP reported.

“No one should ever have to go through one shooting, let alone two,” Tretta said in a phone interview Sunday.“And as someone who was shot at my high school when I was 15 years old, I never thought that this was something I'd have to go through again.”

Another Brown student, Zoe Weissman, reflected on social media about attending middle school next door to the Parkland high school during the mass killing there.

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Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg of Kentucky said on Facebook that his son Ben, a junior at Brown University, was unharmed after he and his roommates used furniture to block themselves inside their room. Greenberg himself survived an assassination attempt while campaigning for mayor in 2022, AP reported.

After Tretta was shot in high school, her advocacy for tighter gun restrictions took her to the White House under former President Joe Biden, and she also met with his former Attorney General Merrick Garland.

She has particularly focused on“ghost guns,” such as the one used at her high school, that can be built from parts and make it difficult to track or regulate owners.

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And at Brown, Tretta had been working on a paper about the educational journeys of students who have lived through school shootings, a subject shaped by her own experience. The paper was due in a few days.

Tretta, who studies international and public affairs and education, said Saturday was the first time she'd gotten such an active shooter alert at Brown.

“I chose Brown, a place that I love, because it felt like somewhere I could finally be safe and finally, you know, be normal in this new normal that I live of a school shooting survivor,” she said.“And it's happened again. And it didn't have to.”

(With inputs from AP)

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