Florida woman who left boyfriend in zipped suitcase for hours sentenced in his death
She was “shocked” by the guilty verdict and thought maybe the jury would convict her of a lesser charge, her lawyer said.
(NewsNation) — Sarah Boone has been sentenced to life in prison for leaving her boyfriend, Jorge Torres, in a suitcase to die back in 2020.
Four years after she was arrested for Torres’ death, Boone was found guilty of second-degree murder in late October after 90 minutes of deliberation.
Her lawyer, James Owens, told NewsNation he’d encouraged her to take a plea deal prior to the verdict.
She was “shocked” by the guilty verdict and thought maybe the jury would convict her of a lesser charge, according to Owens.
What was Sarah Boone accused of?
Boone initially told 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.
Boone zipped her boyfriend into the suitcase during the alleged game of hide-and-seek, leaving him inside overnight.
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.
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, according to the arrest report.
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.
Suitcase murder trial
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.
NewsNation's Liz Jassin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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