A Florida woman has been found guilty of killing her boyfriend in what she called a game of hide-and-seek gone wrong, during which she drunkenly zipped him in a suitcase and then left him there to suffocate.
Sarah Boone showed little emotion when an Orange County jury convicted her on Friday of second-degree murder in the death of Jorge Torres Jr.
He was found dead in their Winter Park apartment the morning of Feb. 24, 2020, after Boone left him sealed inside her luggage overnight, according to a report from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
Boone told authorities they’d been drinking outside their apartment the day before and decided to play a drunken game of hide-and-seek.
“In my head, I said, ‘Oh, man we’re obviously not going to be going to sleep any time soon.’ And I walked over and he was trying to get himself flat so that I couldn’t tell that he was in there,” she testified. “I just kinda zipped him up, we thought it was funny and were joking about how he was small enough to fit inside the suitcase.”
After he was secured inside the bag, Boone wheeled him around the apartment for a bit. At one point, the suitcase flopped over, she recalled.
That’s when “his tone changed,” she said, “and I knew the tone, and we ended up, I guess, arguing back and forth with one another,” Boone said.
“The things that he was saying very much frightened me, cursing at me and threatening me,” she told the court. “It got very heated very quickly.”
At that point, she decided to confront him about his alleged abusive behavior, recording parts of the chilling exchange in a pair of cellphone videos, WESH reported. In one of the clips, Torres could be heard begging for help. He told her he couldn’t breathe, to which Boone responded, “That’s on you. That’s what I feel like when you choke on me.”
When Torres started pushing against the suitcase, Boone said she feared Torres would escape and hurt her. He eventually managed to get a hand out of the bag, but she repeatedly hit him with a baseball bat until he put it back inside, according to Newsweek.
Boone then went upstairs and passed out, leaving Torres inside the suitcase overnight. The next morning, she said she initially assumed he left the apartment, then she “saw the suitcase and remembered about the night prior.”
Both Boone and Torres had previously been arrested on domestic violence-related charges, WFTV reported. Prior to Torres’ death, Boone had an order of no contact placed on Torres.
She’s slated to be sentenced on Dec. 2.