Woman accused of zipping boyfriend into suitcase and suffocating him found guilty of murder

A A Florida woman is accused of zipping her boyfriend into a suitcase and suffocating him was found guilty of murder on Friday, four years after what she initially described to authorities as a case of drunken hide-and-seek gone wrong.

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

Torres was found dead in their Winter Park apartment after Boone said she zipped him into a suitcase during a game of 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 the couple had reportedly been 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 was unresponsive.

Bean testified at her trialtold the court the two had been drinking outside their apartment, and when she went inside she assumed they were going to bed, but Torres allegedly settled into a large suitcase.

“In my head I said, ‘Oh man, we’re obviously not going to sleep anytime soon.’ And I walked over and he was trying to flatten himself so I couldn’t see he was in there,” she said.

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

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

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

Boone said at some point the suitcase fell over and she decided to talk to him about his alleged abusive behavior. She also took out her mobile phone and started filming, she told the court.

In the video clips, Boone allegedly mocked Torres as he begged for help, an NBC affiliate WESH from Daytona Beach reported. She could be heard on the clips telling him that this is “for everything you did to me.”

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

Boone testified that Torres “changed his tone” while in the suitcase and the two began arguing.

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

Boone said Torres started pushing on the suitcase and she was afraid it would come out. After he was able to get one hand out of the suitcase, she hit his hand with a baseball bat until he put it back in.

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

The state said Boone was not in immediate danger when she refused to unzip the suitcase, according to WESH. Prosecutors said Boone killed her boyfriend because she felt 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.