BTS441RG Chip Failure When Reverse Powered
See Note 13 on Page 7 of the BTS441 Datasheet. You are effectively reverse battery connecting the device. A 150R Ground resistor is required to limit ground current in this case. 

Additionally, applying and removing short circuit causes high transient voltages, depending how much inductance is in your circuit. Infineon (in some of its ProFET devices at least) specifies maximum inductance to avoid device destruction. These devices are not bulletproof, and rapid application of S/C can be deadly. When driven from a microcontroller , usually the strategy is to detect the short, switch off the device and then switch the device back on. The stress of turning the device back on into a short is orders of magnitude less than applying a short to a device that is already on.

Looking at your picture, the damage looks like a fused ground bondwire (the one going to Pin 1) This supports the 150R in Ground theory. You can check which bondwire is blown by metering each pin to all the others on the bad and compare to the results on your good device to check.