Former Disney Channel Star Shot While Shooting Sporting Clays

If you grew up in the early 2000s or had kids growing up during that time, you may well have spent a lot of time with The Disney Channel on. For those who grew up in that time and did watch the channel, the name Christy Carlson Romano probably seems familiar. She was one of the stars of the comedy Even Stevens with Shia LeBouf, then went on to provide the voice for Kim Possible.

The latter was one of the more entertaining cartoons of the era, in my humble opinion.

However, Romano’s career has fallen off a bit from that teenage high. She still works and hosts a fairly popular podcast, but she’s not in the limelight like she was while working for Disney.

Instead of remaining in Hollywood, the actress and her husband live in Texas, and it seems she wanted to celebrate her husband’s birthday in the most Texas way they could. They went shooting.

It did not go well.

Yesterday was my husband’s birthday and I took him to shoot clay pigeons as a present. There was another party with us and they unsafely fired in the wrong direction and shot me in the face. @thebrendanrooney immediately sprung into action, assessed me, and rushed me to the hospital. I was hit in 5 places, one was less than an inch from hitting me directly in my right eye.

Unfortunately a fragment got lodged behind my eye and it is too risky to remove surgically at this time. Doctors will continue to monitor me (I can see normally at the moment).

With everything that happened, all I can think about is how grateful I am to be alive. I love my daughters, husband, family, and friends so much. I saw my life flash before my eyes and I’m telling you, hug the people around you every chance you can. Life can change in an instant.

Let me be perfectly clear. This is something that should never happen, particularly at a gun range.

I get that Dick Cheney shot a hunting buddy in the face, but I can see how that happened. It still shouldn’t have, but it’s not difficult to picture a situation where it can happen.

With this, there’s no excuse. There’s no wildlife flying hither and yon. It’s sporting clays, though. They might be flying in multiple directions, but they’re all down range. I just can’t see how this could remotely happen.

Now, it appears Romano will be fine. This could have gone very differently.

I’ll note she’s not throwing shade at the range, range safety officers, or guns in general. She’s just relaying what happened, and I’m sure we’re not getting the totality of the story, obviously. Regardless, there are the Four Rules and those exist for a reason. You can often get away with breaking one, but for something like this to happen, someone broke more than one. This sounds like they broke at least three of them, if not all four.

It should never happen.

My hope is that this individual was immediately thrown off the range and is never allowed back. There can be no tolerance for unsafe gun handling anywhere.