SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (CNS) - At just 21 years old, Brown University student Mia Tretta has survived not one but two school shootings.
In 2019, Tretta, then a junior at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, was shot in the stomach by a 16-year-old boy who also shot four other people, two of whom died, before ending his own life.
Now, after an unidentified gunman killed two people and wounded nine others at Brown University in Rhode Island on Saturday, Tretta is twice a survivor, though this time she avoided the line of fire by staying in her dormitory.
The shooting shattered her sense of safety and innocence, Tretta told BBC News.
"Everyone always tells themselves it'll never be me," she told the outlet.
Attending school at Brown University on the other side of the country, she told herself it wouldn't happen again -- but it did.
"Gun violence doesn't care if you've already been shot before, and it doesn't care what community you're in," she told BBC News. "It's an epidemic that touches every single community."
Since the first shooting, Tretta has been a vocal advocate against gun violence, even speaking at the White House in 2022.
Tretta isn't the only Brown University student who has now survived two school shootings. Zoe Weissman, 20, attended Westglades Middle School -- adjacent to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida -- when a former student shot and killed 17 people in 2018.
"At first, I was panicked," Weissman told NBC News about Saturday's shooting, during which she was also in her dorm room. "Once I knew a little more and I didn't feel there was imminent danger, I felt numb -- exactly how I did when I was 12."
A shelter-in-place order issued for the campus on Saturday was lifted early Sunday morning, according to school officials. Nearly all in-person classes at Brown University have been canceled for the remainder of the semester, according to the university's website.
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