Woman Was ‘Shot’ and ‘Survived’ a Mass Shooting in High School Years Ago. Now, She’s Reeling from the Brown University Massacre

A mother says her daughter has survived a school shooting once before. Now, the family is trying to process yet another tragedy after a deadly mass shooting at Brown University, where the young woman is currently a student.

In a Threads post on Saturday, Dec. 13, Tiffany Shepis-Tretta wrote that her daughter, Mia Page-Tretta, attends the Rhode Island university, where a gunman opened fire on Dec. 13. At least two people were killed and nine others were injured, according to early reports. A person of interest is in custody.

“[Mia] was shot and survived a shooting in high school, now she attends Brown University,” Shepis-Tretta wrote. “No one prepares you for this as a parent and I’m certain nobody prepares you for this as a student or faculty.”

She added a message of support for those affected: “Please send your love to the Brown University community. They will need a lot of love and healing.”

According to a Brown University blog post published in October 2024, Mia was shot by another student at her high school in Santa Clarita, California, in November 2019. The post said she was shot in the stomach by a gunman she did not know.

The blog post also said two of Mia’s classmates — including her best friend — were killed, and two others were injured before the shooter died by suicide.

Mia, who has since become an advocate for gun safety in the United States, spoke in the blog post about how far the effects of a shooting can spread.

“The trauma of one school shooting does not just impact the people who had a bullet inside of them,” she said. “It wasn’t only the survivors, or the parents of the deceased children, or the first responders, or even the woman who lived across the street and had 15 students run into her house with no idea what was going on. Every single person who was there has their own story.”

When talking about her time at Brown, Mia said last year that the campus felt like a place where she could belong.

“[Brown] is really the place where I felt like it could be a home,” she said, adding: “I really want to take this time to become the smartest, most well-rounded version of myself, and Brown is the place I can do that.”

Officials have continued to release details about the people injured in the Dec. 13 shooting. A Brown University Health spokesperson said one person was in critical condition, six were listed as critical but stable, and two had been stabilized, per NBC News. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley later said during a Dec. 14 news conference that one person had been discharged, according to the outlet.

As of Dec. 14, the identities of those killed and injured had not been publicly released.

Another Brown student, Zoe Weissman, described the shock of living through another mass shooting after surviving one as a child.

Weissman, 20, told MS NOW that she was a middle school student in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, when gunman Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people and injured 18 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“I’m really angry. I’m really angry that this is happening to me all over again. And I’m just in shock,” she said. “This isn’t a new phenomenon, and we’re going to get to a point where there’s [more] people like myself who survived two of these.”