Texas Christian University Boat Death Case Resurfaces In Criminal Court

Elliot's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit the following year, which was settled after depositions revealed the young student had been pushed into the water by a girlfriend and killed by the boat's propeller. Now, a criminal case against five students is moving forward.

One of the students on board that fateful day, Carly Martin, now 21, revealed the efforts made to cover up what happened. She says, first and foremost, that the girlfriend, Delaney Brennan, immediately and falsely insisted that she didn't mean to push Elliot into the water after dark.

“Everyone knew for a fact that she did that,” Carly told the paper. “These kids had so many chances to tell the truth and none of them did. The fact that they made the continuous choice to lie is astonishing.”

After dropping out of school and cutting contact with the 11 other students on the boat, Martin made the bold choice to travel to Southern California in December 2019 to talk to Elliot's parents and reveal the truth of what had happened. “I was really scared that if they found out that I went against their story that they were gonna try to f*ck me over and make me sound like a liar, when I was telling the truth, because it really was 10 against one,” she recalled.

Brennan is one of five students now criminally charged. She faces a felony charge of tampering with evidence for deleting cell phone video of the incident.