At first, they thought him fitting inside a suitcase was funny — until it wasn’t. Sarah Boone, 47, is on trial for second-degree murder in the February 2020 death of her boyfriend, 42-year-old Jorge Torres Jr., after she allegedly zipped him up in a suitcase and left him to die. On Tuesday, she took the witness stand in her own defense.
Wearing a dark blazer and dark pants, she described without much emotion throughout her testimony how the two had been drinking for much of the day in question, talking on the back porch of their Florida townhome near Orlando, putting together a 1,000-piece puzzle and completing art projects when Torres wanted to play a game of hide-and-seek by saying “tag you’re it.” Boone ran upstairs to hide in the shower, but Torres never came looking. As she walked downstairs, she saw Torres enter a large suitcase, Boone testified. She zipped him up as a joke, she said.
“We were laughing about it and it was just strange that he was small enough to fit in there,” she testified.
Boone said she rolled the suitcase around the home.
“At that time it was funny,” she said. “We were joking and laughing about it.”
But then Boone decided it was time to teach Torres a lesson. Torres had previously been abusive toward Boone, slashing her in the leg with a steak knife, slamming her head against a metal door and hitting her in several different incidents, she said. Boone wanted to “take the time to talk to him.”
“I have the ability to speak to him in a manner I ordinarily would not have the ability to do,” Boone said.
At this point, Torres began to struggle to breathe and started to beg her to let him out. She refused. Instead, she started mocking him and reminding him of the times he beat her up, video of the incident showed. Not on video, she claims, are Torres’ threats that he was going to “f—ing end” her when he got out of the suitcase.
“It got very heated very quickly,” she said.
Torres was able to get a hand out of the suitcase. Calling it a “split-second reaction,” Boone said she grabbed her son’s baseball bat and hit his hand until he put it back inside. She said she left him in the suitcase because she was “terrified” he would get out and attack her. Boone testified she didn’t think he would die and thought he would be able to get out on his own.
Once upstairs, she fell asleep. She awoke around 11 a.m. and went downstairs around 1 p.m. Looking around for Torres, she came across the suitcase. She remembered she left them in there.
“I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that before,” she testified. “I guess I was aghast.”
Boone pulled Torres out. He was purple and gurgling, she testified.
“I immediately unzipped the suitcase and was like ‘Jorge! Jorge! Jorge!,’ and I was shaking him,” she said.
Boone called her ex-husband who told her to call 911. Torres was declared dead.
Her defense attorney walked her through some of the previous incidents of abuse, showing jurors photos of her injuries as part of her battered spouse syndrome defense. Asked why she didn’t leave him she said she hoped Torres would improve his behavior and that she and Torres were “two bodies with one soul.”
“I love him to this day,” she said.
During cross-examination, prosecutors pressed her previous testimony from a neighbor’s account that said they heard a loud thud the night of the murder, suggesting she may have pushed Torres down the stairs while he was in the suitcase. Assistant State Attorney William Jay also questioned why Boone felt the need to teach Torres a lesson while inside the luggage.
Boone responded there “was no lesson to be learned” but she wanted him to know how she felt about his abuse in hopes he’d become a better person. Jay also had Boone demonstrate to the jury how she zipped up the suitcase and showed Torres’ hand placement when he tried to get out.
“Did you do anything to help him escape from the predicament that you zipped him up in?” Jay asked.
Boone said “No.”
Earlier Tuesday, the prosecution rested its case, paving the way for Boone’s testimony. The trial continues on Wednesday.
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