A Brown University student survived being shot in high school. Then came the active shooter alerts
When Brown University student Mia Tretta’s phone started ringing with an emergency alert during finals week, she tried to convince herself it wouldn’t happen again.
In 2019, Tretta was shot in the stomach during an operation. Mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Two students were killed, and he and two others were injured. He was 15 years old at the time.
On Saturday, Tretta was studying in her dormitory with a friend when the first text message came announcing the emergency at the university’s engineering building. Something must have happened, he thought, but it certainly couldn’t have been a shooting.
As warnings poured in urging people to stay indoors and stay away from windows, the familiarity of the language made it clear what he was afraid of. At the end of the day, Two people died and nine were injured A shooting rampage once again wreaked havoc on a school campus in Providence, Rhode Island.
“No one should ever have to experience a single 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, I never thought it was something I would have to go through again.”
Tretta’s experience reflects a harsh reality for a generation now in college: students who grew up rehearsing lockdowns and active shooter drills, only to encounter years later on campuses again the same violence that once seemed like an escape from it.
In recent years, small groups of students have been subjected to numerous mass shootings at different stages of their education; these included survivors of the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Then there was a deadly shooting at Florida State University in April..
Another Brown student, Zoe Weissman, posted on social media that she was studying at the middle school next to Parkland High School at the time of the mass shooting there. He said he was outside the middle school when the shooting occurred, heard gunshots and screams, saw first responders and then watched videos of what happened.
Mayor Craig Greenberg of Louisville, Kentucky, said on Facebook that his son Ben, a junior at Brown, was safe after using furniture to barricade himself and his roommates inside their room. Greenberg survived assassination attempt During his 2022 mayoral campaign.
After the high school shooting, Tretta pushed for stricter gun restrictions and rose to a leadership role in the group Student Demand Action. His advocacy took him to the White House under former President Joe Biden, as well as He met with former Attorney General Merrick Garland.
He specifically focused on the “ghost guns” used at his high school, which can be constructed from parts and make it difficult to track or edit their owners.
At Brown, Tretta was working on a topic shaped by her own experiences, about the educational journeys of students exposed to school shootings. The newspaper was supposed to be delivered within a few days.
Tretta, who works in international relations, public relations and education, said Saturday was the first time he received such an active shooter alert in Brown.
“I chose Brown, which is a place I love, because it felt like a place where I could finally be safe and finally, you know, be normal in this new normal of living with a kid who survived a school shooting,” he said. “And it happened again. And it didn’t have to happen.”
