Parkland faculty capturing survivor confronts trauma once more throughout Brown College capturing

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It’s uncommon for anybody to say they’ve lived by one mass capturing, 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 pal. Weissman says she suspected instantly that there’d been a capturing.

“That’s one thing my mind at all times goes to due to my trauma,” Weissman advised As It Occurs host, Nil Koksal.

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

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

“I’m positively 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 lively shooter [at Brown University], I form of went into like … survival mode,” stated Weissman.

“I simply form 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 capturing 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 annoyed too,” stated Weissman. “They had been annoyed for me; they had been annoyed that they needed to undergo it once more as nicely.”

The capturing 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 capturing, 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 exterior the Barus & Holley engineering constructing the place the Brown College capturing came about. (Taylor Coester/Reuters) To date in 2025, there have been at the least 394 mass shootings in the US, in response to the Gun Violence Archive.

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

“I believe my expertise is form of indicative of the truth that if we enable gun violence to proceed in America like this, this shall be one thing that impacts everybody personally, and it already has impacted so many individuals personally,” stated 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 capturing at Saugus Excessive Faculty in Santa Clarita, California, in 2019. Now a junior at Brown, she was finding out in her dorm room when her cellphone started buzzing with emergency alerts final Saturday.

“Nobody ought to ever must undergo one capturing, not to mention two,” Tretta advised 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 must 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 capturing 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 change into 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 because the Brown capturing, speaking about “issues [they] wish 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 problem that feels utterly out of your management,” stated Weissman.

She says, usually it takes individuals being personally impacted by gun violence to understand 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 battle gun reform is straightforward.

“The objective is to not take everybody’s weapons away,” stated Weissman. “The objective is to be sure that people who find themselves keen to commit these crimes should not in a position to entry weapons, and that shouldn’t impression you in case you’re a law-abiding citizen who simply needs to defend your self and what not.”