Christy Carlson Ramano Recalls Shotgun Accident That Nearly Blinded Her

Christy Carlson Romano had a brush with death during a February 2025 shotgun sport incident that nearly left her blind.

The former Disney actor recalled the incident in a new interview with Fox News, explaining that, at the time, she was celebrating her husband Brendan Rooney's birthday in Texas during an outdoor clay pigeon shooting event. The pellets came from a person in her party at the range and became lodged in her eye socket.

"I was peppered with birdshot at about 250 feet away, and I was struck in a fat pocket under my eye, and also in my forehead," the former Even Stevens star said. "I still have birdshot behind my eye about a millimeter away from anything critical. And if it were to move, I would go blind. So we're hoping that doesn't happen."

"I, at one point, thought that I was going to die," added Romano, who shares two daughters with Rooney. "And when you have children, you can't help but start to see the world completely differently after an accident like that."

She added that while it’s "quite common" to host shooting occasions in Texas, a member of the party "didn’t choose to be responsible with their firearm" and "fired too closely" in her direction.

In her new memoir, Once Upon a Trainwreck, Romano thought she was "dead" shortly after the accident and recalled her vision blurring as "dark liquid" began to flow against her contact lens. Upon going to the hospital, where Romano was tended to by an oculoplastic surgeon, she called the pellet reaching a fat pocket beneath her eye a "miracle." Doctors refused to remove the fragments, considering surgery to be a risk to Romano's vision.

"I'd have a scar and two pieces of birdshot permanently in my head, but I'd live. That's all that mattered," she wrote.

Also in Romano’s memoir, she extensively recounts her time on Even Stevens opposite Shia LaBeouf, as both actors starred on the former Disney Channel sitcom for three seasons.