Brown University student says she survived second campus shooting: 'Happening to me all over again...'

Talking about PTSD, a Brown University sophomore who survived two shooting incidents in the same college has spoken up.

20-year-old Zoe Weissman survived the Parkland school shooting in 2018, and now she has lived through another campus gun attack, this time at her college in Rhode Island.


“I’m really angry. I’m really angry that this is happening to me all over again. And I’m just in shock,” said Zoe.

She was a teenage student at a Florida high school when 17 people were killed in 2018 when a former student opened fire for six minutes straight using a semi-automatic rifle.

“I think mentally I feel like I’m 12 again. These feels exactly how I felt in 2018,” she told MS NOW, describing how the events at Brown had triggered bad memories of the Parkland massacre.

Brown University shooting

Two students were killed and nine others critically injured when a gunman opened fire at Brown University on Saturday. The shooting took place at around 4 pm local time in a first-floor classroom in the Barus and Holley building, part of the university’s engineering school, where students were attending exam review sessions.

Weissman said that there were no formal classes in session, but students had been on campus preparing for finals before the winter holidays.

She made a chilling claim that experiencing surviving multiple shootings is becoming disturbingly common.

“There’s already students who survived the school shooting in Oxford in Michigan, and then went to Michigan State and survived another school shooting,” she said. “This isn’t a new phenomenon, and we’re going to get to a point where there’s people like myself who survived two of these.”

Following the attack, the university was placed into lockdown as police launched a manhunt for the suspect, who remains at large. Students in parts of the campus were told to shelter in place until officers could escort them to safety. Restaurants and businesses near the campus locked their doors, with staff and customers waiting inside.

An economics professor, Rachel Friedberg, said the shooter entered the classroom, shouted something and began firing, causing students to scramble for cover in the seating.

Officials at Rhode Island Hospital said most of the injured were in a critical but stable condition. The identities of the victims have not yet been released.

Brown University president Christina Paxson called the shooting “deeply devastating” for the community. Exams scheduled for Saturday were cancelled.

Police described the suspect as a man dressed in black who may have been wearing a mask. CCTV footage showed him leaving the building, but his face could not be seen. The weapon has not been recovered, and it is still unclear whether the suspect has any connection to the university.