Woman accused of zipping boyfriend in a suitcase and leaving him to suffocate, found guilty of murder

AND Florida woman accused of locking her boyfriend in a suitcase and leaving him there to suffocate on Friday, four years after she initially described to authorities a case of a drunken hide-and-seek game gone wrong, she was found guilty of murder.

Court records show Sarah Boone was convicted by an Orange County jury of second-degree murder in the death of Jorge Torres Jr. in February 2020.

Torres was found dead in their Winter Park apartment after Boone said she zipped him into a suitcase while playing hide and seek, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said in a report at the time. Boone said she thought it was funny and that they were allegedly drinking alcohol.

She said she went upstairs and passed out, and when she woke up, she realized Torres was still in the suitcase. When she unzipped it, Torres didn’t respond.

Boone she testified at her trialtelling the court that the two had been drinking outside their apartment and when she went inside, she assumed they were going to sleep, but Torres allegedly settled down in a large suitcase.

“I thought, ‘Oh man, clearly we won’t be sleeping anytime soon.’ I walked over and he was trying to flatten himself so I couldn’t tell he was there,” she said.

Boone told the court: “I just zipped it up, we thought it was funny and joked that it was small enough to fit in a suitcase.”

She said she “moved it a little bit” while Torres was still in the suitcase.

“We joked and laughed about it,” she said.

Boone said that at one point the suitcase fell over and she decided to talk to him about his alleged aggressive behavior. She told the court that she also took out her cell phone and started recording a video.

In the video clips, Boone allegedly mocked Torres while pleading for help from an NBC representative LOUSE from Daytona Beach, he said. In the recording, she could be heard telling him it was “For everything you’ve done to me.”

When Torres said he couldn’t breathe, Boone said, “That’s on you. “Oh, this is what I feel like when you choke on me,” the news station reported.

Boone testified that Torres’ “tone changed” while he was in the suitcase, and the two began arguing.

“What he said scared me very much, he swore at me and threatened me,” she told the court. “It got hot very quickly.”

Boone said Torres started pushing the suitcase and she feared it would get out. When he managed to get his hand out of the suitcase, she hit him with a baseball bat until he put it back inside.

She testified in court that she went upstairs and fell asleep. When she woke up, she assumed Torres had left the apartment and then “saw the suitcase and remembered the night before.”

According to WESH, the state determined that Boone was not in immediate danger when she refused to unpack her suitcase. Prosecutors said Boone killed her boyfriend because she believed he deserved to die because of his past actions.

She is expected to be sentenced on December 2.

This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.