Photo: Courtesy of Zoe Weissman

On Valentine’s Day in 2018, Zoe Weissman lived through a middle-school nightmare: There was a mass shooting next door at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida — one of the deadliest school shootings in the nation’s history, in which a gunman killed 17 people and injured 18 others. The experience shaped Weissman’s teen years, as she struggled with PTSD and became involved in gun-violence prevention activism. Then, on Saturday, it happened again. Weissman, now 20, is a sophomore at Brown University, where a gunman opened fire in the Barus & Holley lecture hall, killing two people and injuring nine others. While officials say there’s no threat in Providence, a manhunt for the suspect was still ongoing as of Tuesday morning. 

Weissman now belongs to a rarified yet growing club: students who have lived through two separate mass shootings. She wasn’t even the only gun-violence survivor at Brown on Saturday. Mia Tretta, a 21-year-old junior, had been shot by a classmate who killed two people and injured five others at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, in 2019. “The fact that Mia and I have been through our own independent tragedies, and now have to go through this again … If there was just one of us, that would be insane,” Weissman says. “The fact that there’s two should be a wake-up call for people.” Below, she shares her story.

I was freshly 12 years old when it happened. I was a student at West Glades Middle School, which feeds into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It’s probably less than 1,000 feet away from the building where everything occurred. Many Florida schools have outdoor campuses. The day of the shooting it was nice out; I was outside with my friends working on a project for a class. When the shooting started, we were out of our teacher’s view, so she wasn’t able to get us into her classroom before she had to close the doors. The class had about 35 students, and in the heat of things, she didn’t realize that a few of us were missing. The lockdown procedures were very unclear. We didn’t hear any alerts or any screaming.

We only realized something was happening when we saw the first responders and then heard a few pops. I thought it was a gun, because I was always very anxious about school shootings. My friends were used to me being anxious and were like, “Zoe, calm down.” About a minute after that, we heard a lot of pops in a row followed by people screaming. I now assume there were a bunch of kids hopping the fence onto my school’s campus to get away. Once we heard that, we went to our classroom door, which was covered. I started screaming. Thankfully, a security guard heard us and got us inside.

Even though I wasn’t at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, I still was exposed to it from being outside and developed PTSD. My first flashback was two days after the shooting. Over the past seven years, I have done a lot of work to get myself to a place where I can function normally, but it has changed my life. I’m incredibly hypervigilant. Anytime I’m in public, I’m looking at exits and where I would go if something were to happen. My senses are heightened. I don’t like sudden noises and when people surprise me or come up from behind me. Fireworks or an engine backfiring can make me have flashbacks.

I was also shaped by getting involved in gun-violence prevention activism. I was thrown into the spotlight at a really young age, and that did have an impact on me. But at the same time, it’s been amazing to feel like I’m doing something. In a sense, it’s helped me heal.

I was very set on Brown. It was my dream school. When I visited while doing college tours, I felt how happy and supportive everyone was. Coming from a really competitive high school, that was something that I didn’t feel in a lot of other highly selective colleges. I felt really safe on the campus, like I could let my guard down a little bit. It helped that Rhode Island has good gun laws on the books and some of the lowest rates of gun violence in the country. Providence is also a very safe area. On paper, it was perfect for me. My experience since I started school has been amazing. Everyone is so kind and my professors are great. My courses are really interesting. I’ve been catching myself calling it home: Over Thanksgiving break I said, “I’m flying home on Saturday,” and my family member was like, “Did you just say that home is Brown?”

On Saturday, I was in my dorm, thinking of going to a library when I got a call from my friend. I was on the phone with someone else, so I messaged her, “Can you text?” Instead she just kept calling me. I thought, That’s not good. When I answered, she asked me if I was at Barus & Holley. She sounded like she was crying. I told her, “I’m in my dorm. Was there a shooting?” She wouldn’t answer me, so I said, “I think you need to tell me.” My dorm is a five-minute walk from Barus & Holley. She confirmed there was a shooting and said people had run from that building into where she was. About a minute or two after that, we got the alerts from the school. Then I started hearing first responders. It became very real very quickly.

At first, I felt like I was in danger. But when I found out it was within one specific classroom in that specific building, I was able to physically calm down. I think I immediately asked my friend if it had been a shooting in part because I have PTSD, so my brain will go there for everything. But also, in America, a school shooting is the most rational explanation for if someone calls you crying and asks what building you’re in. It was a combination of my preexisting trauma and the fact that I live in a country where this happens basically every day.

The school went on lockdown for the next 12 hours. I was on the phone pretty consistently with my parents. They were trying to stay calm for me, but I could tell they were freaking out. It felt exactly like the reaction they had during Parkland, but because I’m older now, I was more aware of it. I felt really bad for them, having to go through this all over again. Once they knew I wasn’t in the building, their concern became how I was doing mentally.

I was just in shock. I was also really angry. Not only did this happen to me again, but up until this point, surviving a shooting felt isolating in part because no one else has really been through it. Now, at Brown we all share this experience, and I hate that. I feel like a lot of my classmates aren’t quite ready to talk yet. But from the people I have spoken to, there’s a lot of grief, shock, and frustration. I can see my classmates going through the early stages of trauma that I went through. I feel helpless in a sense. I’ve been talking with my friends and encouraging them all to find professionals who can help them through this.

I’m still getting texts from people I know asking how I am doing. I didn’t think it would be possible to live through two separate mass shootings, statistically. However, I do think a small part of me knew this could happen. I’m shocked, but I’m not surprised. I’m acutely aware of the fact that a mass shooting can happen to anyone, and it doesn’t discriminate based on anything, including whether you’ve been through one before.

This has happened to other gun-violence survivors, too. Students who were survivors of the shooting in Oxford, Michigan, then went on to Michigan State, where there was another shooting. I have friends from Parkland who then went to Florida State University and survived that shooting. This is not a new phenomenon. Unless our politicians can be compelled to take action on this issue, there are going to be more kids like me who survived two shootings.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.