A Florida woman accused of suffocating her boyfriend in a suitcase was convicted of murder on Friday after a 10-day trial.
Sarah Boone, 46, was arrested and charged in February 2020 for the death of her boyfriend, Jorge Torres, 42, in their Winter Park, Florida, apartment.
On Friday evening, jurors reached an agreement after 90 minutes of deliberation to convict her. She previously pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
Prosecutors claim that during a drunken game of hide-and-seek, Boone zipped Torres inside a suitcase, hit him with a baseball bat, and then abandoned him overnight until he died of asphyxiation.
Torres’ struggle in the green suitcase was captured on cellphone video and remained central to the trial, as was the couple’s dysfunctional relationship.
Torres can be heard saying in the video of him inside the suitcase, “Sarah, I can’t breathe, babe.”
“That’s on you,” she says.
“Sarah, I can’t breathe,” he said again.
“That’s on you,” Boone replied.
The 911 call
At 1:11 p.m. on February 24, 2020, Boone called 911 to say that Torres Jr., her boyfriend, was dead in their apartment.
As heard on the recording that WOFL got, she says, “My boyfriend is dead.”
She told the police that she and her boyfriend were “playing last night. I put him in a suitcase, and we were playing.”
She said, “Something like hide-and-seek.”
She said that she “passed out” and when she woke up, Torres was in the suitcase not moving or breathing.
“I do not understand what took place,” she said. “He was bleeding from his mouth.” “He’s purple.”
Boone told them she tried to do CPR on him.
“Nothing took place. She said, “He’s purple.”
Her sentence is set for December 2, and the Orange County State Attorney’s office said in a release that she could spend the rest of her life in prison.
While she was on trial, Boone took the stand to defend herself and said she had no plans to kill Torres.
She also said she was acting in self-defense and that Torres had abused her before, so she didn’t mean to hurt him.
Orange County prosecutors didn’t agree. They said in a statement that her testimony was “contradicted by statements she made and video evidence showing her making fun of the victim as he begged to be freed from the suitcase.”
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