They survived school shootings. Now these Brown students are angry and in shock after university killings

For two Brown University students, receiving a campus-wide emergency text message of an active shooter triggered memories of school shootings they experienced as children.

Mia Tretta, 21, a junior at the university, survived a gunshot wound to the stomach in 2019 when a boy began firing at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Her best friend, Dominic Blackwell, was killed.

Tretta said she spent Saturday evening locked down in her dorm room, learning that two students were killed and nine others were injured in a mass shooting at the Rhode Island university.

“This is not how I imagined my life when I was [a] little girl,” Tretta wrote on X. “ I miss that carefree child I once was.”

Zoe Weissman, 20, a sophomore at Brown, witnessed the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, from her middle school next door. Weissman said Saturday’s shooting brought back feelings of numbness.

“At first I was panicked,” Weissman told NBC News. “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.”

“I’m angry that I thought I’d never have to deal with this again, and here I am eight years later,” she added.

A gunman opened fire in a classroom in the engineering building amid finals week at the Ivy League university in Providence.

Local, state and federal law enforcement officers spent hours looking for a suspect as students in lockdown barricaded themselves in buildings with desks and chairs.

A man in his mid-20s was apprehended at a hotel in Coventry in the early morning hours Sunday, roughly 12 hours after the attack and a several miles from the school’s campus.

The incident has rocked the city of Providence, which hasn’t experienced a mass shooting since 2021, when two rival groups opened fire in Washington Park.

For Weissman and Tretta, not only are they part of a generation of Americans who have become accustomed to school shootings in the United States, but they have also spent years rebuilding a sense of security that was ripped away by previous shootings.

“Ever since that day, I’ve kind of tried everything I could to figure out this new normal life,” Tretta told MSNOW on Saturday as hundreds of law enforcement officers were hunting down the suspected shooter.

Tretta indicated she never thought she’d experience a school shooting again, citing the statistical unlikelihood.

She picked Brown University because she felt safe at the school and in Rhode Island, she said.

Weissman expressed deep frustration with the lack of gun violence prevention legislation in the United States, telling CNN it was too “frustrating” to put into words.

“The common denominator … is inaction on the part of Congress,” said Weissman, referring to failures among lawmakers to implement gun reform in the wake of previous school shootings.

“I think we’ve seen time and time again, Congress has shown they don’t care about their constituents, and if they did, they would immediately pass comprehensive gun violence prevention bills,” she added.