The story of a survivor of two mass shootings in the US

With the holidays just around the corner, 21-year-old Mia Tretta was in her dorm with a friend studying for their final exams. Like other students at Brown University, she was worried after receiving an active shooter alert from the university's public safety department.

But the difference for her is that she has experienced this once before.

Mia was shot in the 2019 mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California.

She told the BBC that this destroyed her sense of security and innocence, reports klankosova.tv.

"Everyone tells themselves it will never be me," she said.

A 16-year-old boy shot her in the stomach and four others; two of them died, including her best friend.

At the time, Mia, a third-year high school student, spent more than a week in the hospital recovering.

She still has bullet fragments in her stomach and has undergone several surgeries for nerve pain and to repair a hole in her eardrum.

The pursuit at Brown University, on the other side of the country, in Rhode Island, was intended to distance him from what happened, so that he could feel safe again.

He told himself that at least it wouldn't happen again.

"Gun violence doesn't care if you've been shot before and it doesn't care what community you're in," she said.

"It's an epidemic that affects every community."

Mia now feels a mixture of fear, confusion and anger. Americans, she says, should not accept mass shootings as a fact of life.

Her generation has grown up practicing active shooter drills in schools, and she is not the only student at Brown University to have experienced a second school shooting.