Wounded in a school shooting in California in 2019, the Brown sophomore has dedicated herself to preventing gun violence nationwide, harnessing her education at Brown to forge a career in advocacy.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Most lemonade stands don't raise $8,000 in two days. Then again, most aren't set up by a 15-year-old school-shooting survivor raising funds for a memorial dedicated to two friends killed in the attack.
For Brown University sophomore Mia Tretta, that lemonade stand marked the beginning of an ever-deepening commitment to preventing gun violence and advocating for survivors.
She led the fundraiser just months after Nov. 14, 2019, when a student at her high school in Santa Clarita, California, pulled a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun - assembled from a kit and lacking a serial number and legal registration, commonly known as a "ghost gun" - from his backpack and opened fire.
The gunman, who Tretta did not know, shot her in the stomach. He killed two of her schoolmates, including Tretta's best friend, and injured two others before killing himself. The entire ordeal lasted only 16 seconds, but its consequences were permanent.
"The trauma of one school shooting does not just impact the people who had a bullet inside of them," said Tretta, who was a few months into her first year of high school when she was shot. "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."
Nearly five years later, Tretta said she has mostly recovered from her physical injuries, while the emotional healing process will be lifelong. But amid pain, confusion and darkness, Tretta found her calling as a gun violence prevention advocate committed to inspiring others to action.
"You can't wait for it to happen to you to be involved," Tretta said.
