Murdaugh murder update: Fatal boat crash survivor says 'attempt was made to frame him as driver' in new court documents

A FATAL boat crash survivor has alleged an "attempt was made to frame him as the driver" in new court documents.

Attorneys for Connor Cook, a South Carolina man who was injured in a 2019 boat crash in which 19-year-old Mallory Beach died, have reportedly filed a petition requesting to oust the law enforcement officers who responded to the incident.

Cook, who escaped the crash with a broken jaw, has filed a petition against the officers — claiming they and unknown people possibly attempted to frame him, Fox News reports.

According to the civil petition, filed in Richland County, South Carolina, on Thursday, Cook suspects authorities tried to make it seem that he was the driver of the boat — which was ultimately revealed to be Paul Murdaugh, who was charged in the incident months later.

He also believes some crash scene evidence has gone missing, the petition — which names the defendants as the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, and "Unknown Others" — explains.

"This motion was kind of a necessity in terms of kind of staring down the barrel at a statute of limitations," said one of Cook's attorneys, Joe McCulloch, according to Fox News.

"And there’s a significant range of questions about whether there is a civil conspiracy case to be made here, and against whom it should be brought."

Cooks' lawyers, McCulloch and Kathy Schillaci, filed the petition along with new depositions — which reveal at least five officers were questioned about their actions during the crash probe, The Island Packet explains.

Cook is seeking to depose those involved and obtain the cell phones of officers involved in the crashes investigation, according to the filing.

The petition states: "[Cook] further believes that these deponents through their official positions with their respective law enforcement agencies, in concert with others unnamed, may have information of collusion and/or a civil conspiracy to shift the blame for the boat accident away from Paul Murdaugh by wrongfully shifting the focus to [Cook]."

The filing of the petition comes after the family of Paul Murdaugh claimed he was receiving threats from strangers before he and his mother were shot dead in a potentially targeted attack in June.

The 22-year-old and his mother Maggie, 52, were found dead with “multiple gunshot wounds” outside the family’s South Carolina hunting lodge on June 7. 

His death came just days after a hearing on a wrongful death civil suit filed against him following the death of Beach.

The family of Mallory Beach filed the suit against Murdaugh after he allegedly crashed his father’s boat "full throttle" into a bridge in March 2019 while intoxicated following a fight with friends. 

Beach and the five other passengers were hurled from the boat and her body was only found a week later. 

Murdaugh, a student at the University of South Carolina, was also awaiting a court date on three felony charges of boating under the influence for the fatal crash. 

The Murdaugh family is highly influential in their South Carolina community and was considered a legal powerhouse.

Three generations of the family have served as the 14th Circuit Solicitor in the southern part of the state, InsideEdition reports.

The felony charges against Paul linked to Beach's death will now be dropped but the civil suit may continue.

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