Christy Carlson Romano says the birdshot left behind her eye sits about a millimeter from anything critical, and moving it could leave her blind. The 42-year-old actress still has 2 pieces embedded in bone after she was shot during a February 2025 clay pigeon shooting outing in Texas for her husband Brendan Rooney’s 42nd birthday.
“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,” Romano said. “And if it were to move, I would go blind. So, we’re hoping that doesn’t happen.”
The Even Stevens actress and Kim Possible voice star was taken to St. David’s South Austin Medical Center in Austin. She suffered a burst blood vessel beneath the white of her eye and still has a scar. She said her surgeon explained that where the birdshot struck, in the fat beneath her eye, helped spare her sight.
In her memoir Once Upon a Trainwreck, Romano wrote that “there was another part of our party that didn’t choose to be responsible with their firearm and fired too closely in my direction.” She didn’t identify the shooter, whom she described as remorseful.
What Romano described as “dark liquid” spread across her contact lenses as her sight blurred; she recalled collapsing. Rooney and the shooter came to help. She was growing lightheaded when she asked her husband of more than 10 years, “It’s been a good run, right?” after looking up at him.
Romano and Rooney have 2 daughters, Isabella “Izzy,” 9, and Sophia, 7. Reflecting on how the shooting changed her outlook, she said: “When you have children, you can’t help but start to see the world completely differently after an accident like that.”