Did Charlie Sheen Really Shoot Kelly Preston? 21 Years Later, We Get the Answer

While on tour, actor finally tells his complete version of events from the infamous incident

By Gina Serpe May 03, 2011 8:33 PMTags
Kelly Preston, Charlie SheenRon Galella, Ltd./WireImage

By now, everyone's heard that infamous pop-culture anecdote about how, back in 1990, Charlie Sheen allegedly (and accidentally) shot then-fiancée Kelly Preston in the arm, right?

Well, you've never heard Charlie's side of it. Until today.

While on the Vancouver stop of his My Violent Torpedo of Truth tour last night, Sheen, who has been telling a condensed version of the incident, a tour set piece, on the road, finally got around to telling the most complete version of events from that now infamous night.

And wouldn't you know it, there's not a lick of blame to be found anywhere near him! And even more impressively, it actually makes sense (or at the very least explains why no charges were ever filed and while, even now, Preston defends Sheen as a "great man"):

"I was downstairs early in the morning making coffee and I thought she was still asleep upstairs," he said, regaling the crowd. "And I heard a f--king gunshot go off. I thought, 'She did it, she finally f--king did it. She killed herself and they're going to f--king blame me.'

"So I abandoned the coffee, because a gunshot in the morning will wake you up better than a nice cup of coffee," he said, drawing increasing laughs from the crowd.

"I come around the corner and there's naked Kelly Preston at the top of the stairs, holding her wrist, staring at me, covered in blood…and I thought, that's pretty f--king hot," he explained, before quickly adding, "I didn't. I didn't."

After tending to Preston, laying her down, grabbing towels and bandages and managing to stop the bleeding, he got around to asking her what happened.

As you would.

"She explained to me when she lifted my pants off the scale in the bathroom…the tiny revolver I used to carry…it fell out of the back jeans pocket and hit the floor and shot a bullet right between her legs," he explained amid much interjecting from his onstage cohort. "So she got hit with shrapnel from the toilet bowl."

But that wasn't the weirdest part—at least not for Charlie.

"The oddest moment…when I picked up the phone, I looked at the phone, completely perplexed, and I didn't know whether to call 911 or 411. But for years people thought, there was always this conversation, this discussion about the time I tried to kill Kelly Preston."

So now we know. Straight from the horse's (potty) mouth.