It's hard to believe that 10 years have gone by since the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The young students who survived the shooting are now teenagers, and some of them, like Nicole Melchionno, are speaking out.
Nicole is now 17, but she remembers every detail of the shooting she thought might claim her life.
She opened up about that day in a People exclusive ahead of the 10th anniversary of the massacre.
"Kids shouldn't have to worry when they go to school," the 17-year-old, who advocates for action against gun violence, told the outlet. She also shared some jarring details of what she experienced when the gunman entered the building that day.
Nicole was a 7-year-old second grader who was seated near the front of her classroom. For that reason, she imagined that if the gunman entered her class, she would be the first to be killed. "I thought I was never going to see my family again," she said. "I was scared that I was going to die."
Nicole remembers everything, like being huddled with her teachers and her classmates next to the coat cubbies. She remembers the sounds outside the classroom. "The intercom was left on, so everything was amplified," she revealed.
Nicole did make it out, but says she was plagued by horrible anxiety. As she grew, and kept hearing about the growing number of school shootings, she decided to do something to end gun violence, so that other children wouldn't be scarred like she was — or lose their lives.
In 2018, she got involved with gun violence prevention.
"It's just so painfully common in this country," she says of the constant stream of mass shootings. Now she takes part in marches and joined the Junior Newtown Action Alliance. "It was empowering," she said of taking action.
When the Uvalde tragedy happened, Nicole said she felt it deeply and wanted to do more. She started speaking at news conferences in Connecticut and at rallies in Washington, DC, and has worked with with March for Our Lives, lobbying senators about an assault weapons ban.
While Nicole is just a regular student who is starting to apply to college, she says that her generation simply won't look past the issue of gun violence "because we really are the only generation that's had to grow up through this." Despite what she's been through, Nicole says she's "hopeful for the future."
