PARENTS SEEK LAW TO REQUIRE AIDING A PERSON IN DISTRESS

Overdoses: Courts Have Been Busy With Cases In Which Friends Abandoned
Dying Companions

WEST JORDAN - Utah law has no specific statute that requires rendering
assistance to someone in distress.

But Michael and Georgia Martinez - whose son died of a heroin overdose
in the basement of a friend - believe there should be.

"If you see someone dying of an overdose, or anything, you should have
to help, or at least call 911," Michael Martinez said Wednesday.

His wife Georgia has collected 600 signatures in support of such a
law, and the couple hopes to find a lawmaker to sponsor it in time for
next year's Legislature.

"Maybe we'll call it 'Zach's Law,' " said Michael Martinez.

The Martinezes' efforts are timely:

l Two teens were sentenced Wednesday in 3rd District Juvenile Court
for dumping the body of their son, 18-year-old Zachary Martinez, at a
Draper hang gliding park in March 2005.

* Also on Wednesday, a jury trial began in 3rd District Court for Mark
Anthony Chernin Jr., 20, who is charged with desecration of a dead
human body for allegedly helping a friend dump the body of an overdose
victim.

* And on Tuesday, 18-year-old Macall Petersen went to prison for up to
six years for injecting her best friend, 18-year-old Amelia Sorich,
with a mixture of heroin and cocaine, and then dumping her body in the
hills above Bountiful.

In the Martinez case, Austin Uncles, 18, and Nile Boyce, 17, were
found guilty at trial last month of desecration of a dead human body,
a third-degree felony.

Uncles was sentenced to 14 days in the Salt Lake County jail. Boyce,
who was also convicted of possessing heroin and drug paraphernalia,
was sentenced to 30 days at a youth detention facility. Both were
fined $750 and ordered to perform community service.

Chernin is accused of helping to dispose of the body of Phillip Alan
Northcutt,

46, who died Aug. 27 after ingesting methamphetamine at the Sandy home
of Lysle Wayne Swenson.

Swenson, 23, pleaded guilty in February to desecration and was
sentenced to nine months in jail.

Chernin claims Swenson threatened and coerced him to assist putting
Northcutt's body in the back seat of the victim's car. The car was
left on a Sandy street, where it was discovered two days later by police.

Robert Stott, Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office spokesman,
said that while Utah does not have a so-called Good Samaritan law,
people can be charged with negligent homicide for failing to help a
dying overdose victim.

"It depends on the situation," he said.

When Zachary Martinez passed out while doing drugs with his friends,
no one called 911.

But authorities say such a call could easily have saved his life
because ambulances carry antidotes that can revive a heroin overdose
victim almost immediately.

The deaths of Martinez and Sorich gained press attention because their
bodies were dumped in public places. But Michael Martinez noted that
more than 100 Utahns die each year doing illegal drugs.

"It's at epidemic proportions," he said. "It's getting worse and
worse. I'm trying to help anybody I can help."