For some Brown College survivors, this wasn’t their first college taking pictures

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LISTEN | Full interview with Zoe Weissman: As It Occurs 7:29 Parkland college taking pictures survivor confronts trauma once more throughout Brown College taking pictures

It’s uncommon for anybody to say they’ve lived via one mass taking pictures, not to mention two.

However at simply 20 years previous, Zoe Weissman now belongs to a membership that nobody would ever select to affix.

The sophomore says she was in her dorm room on Brown College’s campus Dec. 13, when she acquired a frantic cellphone name from a good friend. Weissman says she suspected instantly that there’d been a taking pictures.

“That’s one thing my mind all the time goes to due to my trauma,” Weissman informed As It Occurs host, Nil Koksal.

In 2018, Weissman says she was outdoors the center college subsequent door when she heard the gunshots from the Valentine’s Day bloodbath at Majory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen individuals had been killed. Weissman was 12 years previous on the time.

She says the expertise left a long-lasting mark. She struggled with post-traumatic stress dysfunction and later grew to become concerned with activism round gun violence prevention.

“I’m undoubtedly extra hyper-vigilant, extra conscious of my environment than my friends, and so I believe that the second that I heard that there was an energetic shooter [at Brown University], I type of went into like … survival mode,” mentioned Weissman.

“I simply type of knew precisely what to do, and I believe a part of that's my technology grew up having lockdown drills and college shootings ingrained inside us.”

As alerts started to pour in and it grew to become clear the taking pictures was remoted to the college’s engineering constructing, Weissman says she went into fight-or-flight mode, locking and barricading her dorm room door.

The lockdown lasted till 6 a.m. the next morning. She says she spent these agonizing hours watching the information for updates and staying in touch with relations, who tried to maintain her calm — as soon as once more.

“They had been pissed off too,” mentioned Weissman. “They had been pissed off for me; they had been pissed off that they needed to undergo it once more as properly.”

The taking pictures in Windfall, Rhode Island, left two individuals lifeless and 9 others injured.

It took police 5 extra days to trace down the alleged man behind the taking pictures, suspected to have killed a Massachusetts professor earlier than taking his personal life.

<img loading="lazy" alt="Bouquets of flowers are seen in front of a building." srcset="https://i.cbc.ca/ais/cd3e3a14-814d-461d-8f4e-ea8abaf6a558,1766529814254/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C6500%2C4334%29%3BResize%3D805 805w,https://i.cbc.ca/ais/cd3e3a14-814d-461d-8f4e-ea8abaf6a558,1766529814254/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C6500%2C4334%29%3BResize%3D1104 1104w,https://i.cbc.ca/ais/cd3e3a14-814d-461d-8f4e-ea8abaf6a558,1766529814254/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C6500%2C4334%29%3BResize%3D1280 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 762px) 93.6vw,730px" src="https://i.cbc.ca/ais/cd3e3a14-814d-461d-8f4e-ea8abaf6a558,1766529814254/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C6500%2C4334%29%3B" style="aspect-ratio:1.4997692662667281" data-cy="image-img"/> A makeshift memorial outdoors the Barus & Holley engineering constructing the place the Brown College taking pictures occurred. (Taylor Coester/Reuters) To this point in 2025, there have been not less than 394 mass shootings in america, based on the Gun Violence Archive.

Weissman says she’s not solely wrestling via grief and disappointment, however anger and frustration.

“I believe my expertise is type of indicative of the truth that if we enable gun violence to proceed in America like this, this might be one thing that impacts everybody personally, and it already has impacted so many individuals personally,” mentioned Weissman.

Seems Weissman wasn’t the one gun violence survivor at Brown College final Saturday.

Mia Tretta, 21, was shot within the stomach by a classmate who killed two different individuals throughout a mass taking pictures at Saugus Excessive College in Santa Clarita, California, in 2019. Now a junior at Brown, she was learning in her dorm room when her cellphone started buzzing with emergency alerts final Saturday.

“Nobody ought to ever should undergo one taking pictures, not to mention two,” Tretta informed the Related Press throughout a cellphone interview final Sunday. “And as somebody who was shot at my highschool after I was 15 years previous, I by no means thought that this was one thing I’d should undergo once more.”

<img loading="lazy" alt="A young woman poses on a sofa for a photo. Behind her is a wall of posters with gun violence prevention messages." srcset="https://i.cbc.ca/ais/0e8f83c6-6feb-48cb-a239-d979de82a155,1766528660992/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C5462%2C3636%29%3BResize%3D805 805w,https://i.cbc.ca/ais/0e8f83c6-6feb-48cb-a239-d979de82a155,1766528660992/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C5462%2C3636%29%3BResize%3D1104 1104w,https://i.cbc.ca/ais/0e8f83c6-6feb-48cb-a239-d979de82a155,1766528660992/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C5462%2C3636%29%3BResize%3D1280 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 762px) 93.6vw,730px" src="https://i.cbc.ca/ais/0e8f83c6-6feb-48cb-a239-d979de82a155,1766528660992/full/max/0/default.jpg?im=Crop%2Crect%3D%280%2C0%2C5462%2C3636%29%3B" style="aspect-ratio:1.5022002200220022" data-cy="image-img"/> Mia Tretta poses after an interview in her dormitory, following a taking pictures at Brown College, in Windfall, Rhode Island, U.S. December 14, 2025. ( Kylie Cooper/Reuters) Weissman, now a medical anthropology pupil, says experiences like these are a part of what led her to grow to be concerned in gun violence prevention activism in 2019, a course of she describes as cathartic and central to her therapeutic. She says she and Tretta have been in contact for the reason that Brown taking pictures, speaking about “issues [they] need to do when [they] get again on campus.”

“It makes me really feel productive, like I’m doing one thing, particularly when your trauma is said to this massive overarching subject that feels fully out of your management,” mentioned Weissman.

She says, usually it takes individuals being personally impacted by gun violence to comprehend that prevention is “value giving up arms” or “having restrictions” on weapons, however by then it’s too late.

Weissman says her message to Individuals who combat gun reform is easy.

“The objective is to not take everybody’s weapons away,” mentioned Weissman. “The objective is to make it possible for people who find themselves keen to commit these crimes will not be in a position to entry weapons, and that shouldn’t affect you when you’re a law-abiding citizen who simply desires to defend your self and what not.”