Former “Home Improvement” actor Zachery Ty Bryan has been arrested in Oregon for allegedly violating the probation he received in a 2023 domestic violence case, his sixth arrest in five years. The 44-year-old, who played Brad Taylor on the 1990s sitcom and appeared in “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” was taken into custody in Eugene on Saturday, Nov. 29, according to Lane County jail records.
Records show Bryan was booked on a probation-violation warrant tied to a prior domestic violence conviction and is being held without bail until at least Wednesday. His fiancée, Johnnie Faye Cartwright, was arrested in the same incident and faces five counts, including driving under the influence, three counts of reckless endangering and one count of attempted first-degree assault; she remains in custody while prosecutors review the case.
The new case tests the plea agreement that kept Bryan out of a lengthy prison term. In October 2023 he pleaded guilty to felony assault in the fourth degree in an Oregon domestic violence case. Lane County chief deputy district attorney Chris Parosa said prosecutors dismissed a second assault count and recommended seven days in jail in exchange for 36 months of supervised probation with domestic-violence conditions, warning that any violation could trigger a suspended 19- to 20-month prison sentence. That probation came after a 2020 guilty plea to menacing and fourth-degree assault and a series of domestic-violence and DUI arrests in Oregon, California and South Carolina through 2024 and early 2025.
Domestic-violence specialists say repeat arrests of offenders already on probation expose weaknesses in supervision and leave partners exposed to continued risk. In a recent warning about recall rules, Domestic Abuse Commissioner Dame Nicole Jacobs said releasing domestic abuse offenders after fixed periods without thorough risk assessments can leave victims “at serious risk,” language campaigners apply broadly to serial offenders on community sentences.
Bryan has rejected the harshest characterizations of his behavior; in a 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he called the 2020 case “blown out of proportion” and said the argument was loud rather than violent. Cartwright, who has three children with Bryan, has previously asked for privacy and said he was “working hard” on himself. Neither has publicly commented on the latest arrest, and court records do not yet list an attorney of record.
