Sheriff: Incident report mistakenly said Alex Murdaugh had no visible injury after being shot in head

HAMPTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCBD) – An incident report from the Hampton County Sheriff’s Office mistakenly said Alex Murdaugh had no visible injury after reporting he had been shot in the head Saturday.

A corrected report subsequently released indicates Murdaugh was visibly injured, with what was listed as a “major injury.”

Officials with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said Murdaugh called 911 saying he had been shot in the head along Old Salkehatchie Road near Varnville, South Carolina.

The report states a landing zone was established along Charleston Highway and Murdaugh was airlifted to what SLED later revealed was Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah, Georgia.

There, he was treated for a superficial gunshot wound to the head, according to SLED.

Doctors with the University of Utah Hospital say head injuries bleed a lot due to the number of blood vessels in the head. They say about 20% of the blood that flows from the head to the heart connects to the brain.

The blood vessels are vulnerable to injury associated with trauma due to their location.

“Your scalp can bleed profusely from even a minor cut. Many tiny arteries and veins serve the individual muscles and skin on your head,” doctors and researchers with the university said. “Some of these blood vessels lie deep within your skull, while other superficial arteries and veins are quite close to the surface of your skin.”

An emergency physician at the University of Utah Hospital, Dr. Troy Madsen, wrote, “even small lacerations to the head can lead to very large amounts of bleeding.”

While we know Murdaugh experienced a superficial gunshot wound, the location of the so-called injury has not yet been revealed. It’s likely he was airlifted to the Savannah, GA hospital as a precaution due to the amount of bleeding that he experienced.

A family attorney and Alex Murdaugh’s brother, Randy, said Alex was attempting to change a tire on the side of the road when a vehicle pulled up and fired. Those details have not been confirmed by SLED.

Alex Murdaugh released a statement shortly after the shooting saying he planned to seek rehab for what his brother later referred to as a “drug addiction” and that he would resign from his family’s law firm.