I was thrown under the bus by my co worker (cousin) at my job. How should I move forward with this?

I work in the funeral industry. My co worker (cousin) is the transportation supervisor. His job is to dispatch the pick up locations of various deceased or help with the pick up.

The incident that got me thrown under the bus -

We had a call in a VERY shady neighborHOOD to pick up a deceased individual who weighed over 300+lbs. To add on to that, they didn’t include in the call that he lived on the top floor of the apartment building and there was NO elevator.

We arrive to the call, greet the family and set up as usual to prepare the deceased to go into the body bag. We holster them into a reave (essentially gurney without wheels) My cousin gets the feet-end of the deceased in the gourney & I get the head-end of the deceased. The head-end is known to be the heaviest part. I carried my end with no problem. So did my cousin.

We carry the deceased down 3 flights of steps (very narrow steps, 8 steps per flight) as we reach the last flight of steps my cousin notices the family members recording us outside of the apartment building’s main door. He says let’s switch. I say for what? We’re almost there (there - being our stretcher)

He wanted to switch so his face could be on camera and he could be seen carrying the deceased out. I said whatever and we swap places.

He begins to pick up the head end while I pick up the feet end. The deceased individual slightly starts to turn on their side during the pick up (on my cousins end- the head portion) & the family members outside (Mainly Older women) start to scream and yell “He’s FALLING!!!!!!!” My cousin starts to panic from their reaction and says blatantly to me “Why did you pick him up like that ***** (***** being my name)! Put him down! We need to readjust them!!

He then says in front of the family “For future reference you don’t pick them up like that, you pick them up like this”

I look at him with rage in my eyes but I kept my composure because I couldn’t believe he just tried to pin his fk up on me.

In reality, the weight difference from him carrying the foot portion and then swapping to the head portion through his balance off which caused the gurney to tilt on his end.

The family reported the incident to the funeral home and my cousin blamed me for the fk up, in reality it was his fk up. I have over 5 years of transporting under my belt. From working uber to MAJOR trauma hospital centers transporting patients and deceased alike.

I told the manager I needed to speak to him tomorrow 1 on 1 to discuss what happened because I’m tired of being the fall guy for him. This is the third time he’s thrown me under the bus for his fk ups.

I don’t want to get him fired. But I want the manager to know I WAS NOT the cause of this.