A profound sense of grief and shattered security has enveloped Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, following a shooting on Saturday that left two students dead and nine others injured. As federal and local authorities continue their search for the perpetrator, the campus community is left to grapple with the aftermath. For one student, however, this horrific event is a tragically familiar experience.
A Survivor's Haunting Familiarity
Twenty-one-year-old junior Mia Tretta has now lived through two separate school shootings. Her first ordeal occurred in 2019 when, as a 15-year-old high school student in Santa Clarita, California, she was shot in the abdomen during a mass shooting at Saugus High School. That attack claimed the lives of her close friend, Dominic Blackwell, and another student, Gracie Anne Muehlberger.
On Saturday, Tretta and her roommate were in their Brown University dorm when a flood of text messages alerted them to an active shooter in the university's engineering building. "I assumed – the fire alarm goes off all the time and there’s no fire – but then we started getting hundreds of texts," Tretta recounted. The situation escalated rapidly with an official university directive instructing students to "Run, hide, fight," plunging the campus into a lockdown that lasted until the following morning.
"It was terrifying, and it was terrifying for my friends who were there," she said. "It’s terrible that this happened at Brown, but it’s not surprising, at all. This has happened all over the country and it’s only a matter of time before it happens to everyone."
From Victim to Advocate: A Lifelong Campaign
Since surviving the 2019 shooting, Tretta has dedicated herself to gun violence prevention activism. She has spoken at vigils and rallies, and in 2021 highlighted to the Guardian the urgent need for federal regulation of untraceable homemade firearms, known as ghost guns. One such weapon was used in the attack that injured her.
"In my situation, we still don’t know who bought the gun. We know who used it, but we can’t trace it back," Tretta explained. "I want people to use my story to show what happens when anyone can get a gun." Her advocacy took her to the White House Rose Garden in April 2022, where she stood with then-President Joe Biden.
The statistics underscore the crisis Tretta campaigns against. Gunshot wounds are now the leading cause of death for American teenagers. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been nearly 400 mass shooting incidents in 2025 where four or more people were shot.
A Growing Cohort of Repeat Survivors
Tretta is part of a disturbing and expanding group of young adults who have survived multiple mass shootings. Another Brown student, 20-year-old Zoe Weissman, witnessed the 2018 Parkland, Florida school shooting as a 12-year-old. Similarly, at least two survivors of the 2021 Oxford High School shooting in Michigan later endured another shooting at Michigan State University in 2023.
Just days before the Brown University attack, Tretta was in Washington D.C., performing at a national vigil for all gun violence victims. The event, organised by the Newtown Action Alliance, brought together dozens affected by the epidemic. "Unfortunately, gun violence doesn’t care whether you’ve been shot before, or are at the fanciest of Ivy League institutions or [in] the inner city. Gun violence doesn’t care," she stated.
She directs fierce criticism at the political establishment for its failure to act. "The current politicians we have, their sole job is to keep us safe, and if we can’t walk to the supermarket or go to class and not be afraid of being shot, they’re not doing their job," Tretta said. "I don’t know what it’s going to take for people – especially politicians – to do something." For Mia Tretta and a generation marked by gunfire, the fight for safety continues, a fight born from the most personal and repeated of tragedies.
