It's one of those laws, he said, that works best when it never has to be put to use.

Sorich lost his 18-year-old daughter, Amelia, in June after she overdosed from a mix of cocaine and heroin. Instead of calling 911, her friends panicked when they noticed she was unconscious. They loaded her into a car and dumped her in the Bountiful foothills. The woman's body was found two days later by a man walking along Skyline Drive.

Prompted by cases similar to Sorich's, as well as the firsthand accounts of a narcotics deputy for the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, Rep. Carol Spackman Moss plans to introduce a bill that would make it a class B misdemeanor for someone to witness a drug overdose and not call for medical help.

"People are dying more frequently of drug use than they used to and it's in a recreational kind of setting with young people. It leaves parents distraught and horrified that anybody could be so callous," Moss said.

Sorich's friends, Jasen Calcino, 19, and Macall Peterson, 18, were charged with negligent homicide, abuse of a body and obstruction of justice. Their case is unique because they allegedly took extra measures to conceal Sorich's death when they moved her body, hid her car and threw her purse into a garbage bin.

A similar scenario surrounded the death of 27-year-old Stephen Sill in November. Sill's roommates knew he had used heroin but failed to call 911 when they heard him snoring loudly from his downstairs room. They tried to revive him by placing ice cubes on his face. It didn't work. By the time they dialed 911 several hours later, it was too late. Sill was pronounced dead at the hospital.

It was a tragedy that Salt Lake County sheriff's Deputy Doug Lambert just couldn't live with.

"It was upsetting. Here was a young man who had his whole life ahead of him. He had a family and just started a new job. It was difficult to conduct the interview [with his roommates] and know that they knew his condition and chose not to get immediate help," Lambert said.

But because the roommates did not move Sill's body and there were no extra measures taken to conceal his death, nobody could be prosecuted. Lambert found there were no laws on Utah's books that could hold the roommates accountable. Lambert then contacted Moss about changing the law to help overdose victims.

"If that case has happened to me, then I'm sure it's happened to many other investigators throughout the state," Lambert said. "People can willfully use drugs and if something goes wrong, they literally can stand by and watch their friend die and nothing will happen to them. It just doesn't seem right, doesn't seem fair that a person could receive a death sentence for making a bad choice."

Moss, a Democrat representing Holladay, recognized Sill as a student she taught in a high school English class about 10 years ago. She set her sights on writing the bill for consideration in the 2006 Legislature.

Between 100 and 120 people die of illicit-drug overdoses each year, according to state Medical Examiner Todd Grey. The majority of those are caused by drug combinations, the most common of which is heroin and cocaine, known as a speedball.

Lambert said he hopes a law would raise awareness about what to do for overdose victims.

"If this bill passes, the message is going to be: You are in far greater danger legally by not getting the person help," he said.

mwestley@sltrib.com