ripping layers off a board can it causes a short
Ripping copper off of a board is one thing. But the real thing to ask is what caused the need for repair in the first place. The short to ground could be unrelated to the ripped off copper and rather related to the reason that a repair was needed.

Let us take an example. Say a laptop has a USB stick inserted into one of its USB ports. Then something terrible happens and the USB stick is torqued up, down or sideways in a very sudden and forceful way ... (could be to dropping laptop, inserting it into a backpack with USB still plugged in or even shoving a lunch tray against it). This action causes the USB connector on the laptop main board to be ripped partly from its mountings. Particularly if that connector has some through hole mounting points the damage may break the internal layers of the PCB and cause a short like described.

With the broken USB connector the laptop is taken to a repair tech for work. In the attempt to remove the connector some of the copper traces that connected to SMT pads of some of the connector pins get pulled up. (Note that this is rather common which makes repairs of many modern electronics devices very difficult if not impossible). In the repair the tech may not have realized the inner layer damage at the through hole pins on the connector.

Now you can see how the situation could have been created.