Gasping for air: woman accused of zipping boyfriend into suitcase to die

A Florida woman was arrested on Tuesday after her boyfriend was found dead in a zipped-up suitcase.

Sarah Boone, 42, from Florida was arrested on Tuesday after her boyfriend was found dead in a zipped-up suitcase. She claimed that Jorge Torres Jr’s death was caused following the result of a hide-and-seek game that went wrong. However, Sarah’s claim did not prevent police from arresting her after seeing two troubling videos on her phone, showing Boone taunting Torres as he struggled to get out of the luggage.

According to the arrest affidavit written by Detective Chelsey Connolly, which was reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel, Boone said she and her boyfriend spent Sunday evening sharing a bottle of Chardonnay while painting and doing puzzles. Later in the evening, they started playing hide-and-seek, at which point they thought it would be funny for Boone to zip Torres into a blue suitcase.

Boone had initially told police that she left the zipper slightly unzipped and that two of Torres’ fingers could get through. The suspect said she passed out after going upstairs while Torres was still in the suitcase, hoping that Torres had unzipped the suitcase and joined her to bed, only to woke to her cellphone ringing multiple times. She insisted she called 911 after finding her boyfriend who was still in the suitcase “unresponsive and not breathing”.

By the time she opened the suitcase, Torres was unresponsive and not breathing, the affidavit reads.

She didn’t call authorities immediately, and instead calling her ex to come over first. When he got there, he told her to call 911, Connolly writes. Torres was pronounced dead by paramedics shortly after, around 1 p.m.

The affidavit noted that there were long fingernail scratches on Torres’ upper back and neck, he had a busted lip, and that there were bruises on his shoulder, skull, and forehead consistent with blunt force trauma. It didn’t say the precise cause of death.

Boone gave police consent to look through their phone, and they found two videos on it showing Torres struggling to get out of the suitcase, according to the affidavit.

In the first video, Torres is heard yelling Boone’s name and trying to get out of the suitcase while she laughs.

“Yeah, that’s what you do when you choke me. You should probably shut the [expletive] up.” Boone said in the video, according to Connolly. “That’s on you. Oh, that’s what I feel like when you cheat on me.”

“I can’t [expletive] breathe, seriously,” Torres said, according to the affidavit.

The second video shows Torres crying out and struggling to get out of the suitcase from a different position.

During a second interview with investigators, Boone was confronted with the videos, and couldn’t even get halfway through watching one of them, according to the affidavit.

She said she doesn’t remember recording the videos and admitted that they “looked ‘bad,'” according to the affidavit.

The accused is currently behind held without bond at the Orange County Jail. If convicted, she faces the possibility of spending the rest of her life in prison.