Florida woman found guilty of murder for leaving her boyfriend to die in a suitcase

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A woman accused of leaving her boyfriend to die after he was zipped into a suitcase in their home was found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury in central Florida.

Four years after Sarah Boone was arrested in the death of Jorge Torres, jurors handed down the verdict against her on Friday evening after deliberating for about 90 minutes. Boone had pleaded not guilty.

Boone initially told detectives with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office that she and Torres had been playing hide-and-seek on Feb. 23, 2020, in their Winter Park, Florida, residence when they thought it would be funny for Torres to get into the suitcase.

They had been drinking and she decided to go to sleep, thinking her boyfriend could get out of the suitcase on his own, she told detectives, according to an arrest report.

When she woke up the next morning, she didn’t find Torres but then remembered he was in the suitcase. She unzipped the suitcase and found him unresponsive, the arrest report said.

Detectives charged Boone with murder after they found videos on her cellphone showing Torres yelling from inside the suitcase that he couldn’t breathe and repeatedly calling out Boone’s name, according to the arrest report.

During her trial, Boone testified that past violent incidents between her and Torres caused her to perceive a threat of imminent harm and that she acted in self-defense by keeping him in the suitcase.

“Yeah that’s what you do when you choke me,” Boone said in one of the cellphone videos from that night, according to the arrest report. “Oh, that’s what I feel like when you cheat on me.”

An autopsy report said Torres had scratches on his back and neck and contusions to his shoulder, skull and forehead from blunt force trauma, as well as a cut near his busted lip.

Boone had gone through several attorneys since her arrest, contributing to the delay in her trial, which lasted 10 days.

She is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 2 and faces up to life in prison.

___ Associated Press reporter Michael Schneider in Orlando contributed to this report. Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Kate Payne, The Associated Press