A Michigan State student who survived Monday night’s mass shooting also survived the tragic 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
Jackie Matthews, 21, made an emotional TikTok video that has since gone viral, saying, “I am 21 years old, and this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through.”
“The fact that this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through is incomprehensible,” Matthews said.
Matthews is a senior at Michigan State and survived the deadly shooting that killed three and critically wounded five others on the campus.
Matthews was a student at Sandy Hook Elementary when gunman Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 students and six teachers and staff on December 14, 2012.
Matthews posted her video just a few feet away from where suspect Anthony Dwayne McRae gunned down several MSU students just hours before.
She said she still suffers from a “full-blown PTSD fracture” in her lower back from the hours she spent crouching in her Sandy Hook classroom ten years ago.
“My heart goes out to all the families and the friends of the Michigan State shooting,” she continued.
“But we can no longer just provide love and prayers. It needs to be legislation, it needs to be action. It’s not okay. We can no longer allow this to happen. We can no longer be complacent.”
Matthews’ video has made its rounds on social media, with many people commenting supporting her.
“We’ve let down generations of children by letting this continue,” one user replied on a Twitter post posted by Mom Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, who retweeted Matthews’ emotional video.
“No person should ever endure what you have endured, even once,” another wrote.
Matthews’ is not the only student at the university that survived their second mass shooting. A freshman, who has not been identified, survived the Oxford High School shooting in 2021.
“I can’t believe this is happening again,” the student’s distraught mother told the Detroit Free Press in the aftermath of the Monday night carnage, which also took place on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Fla.
