![\"Isabel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4798354ec8b3dcd6d68086a830301af7f32ad566fd0f19acdeda86a7b5f15020.png\")
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August 2, 2026 \u2014 4:47pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n On a sunny summer morning in February 2024, Michelle Sposito was jolted awake by a series of texts from her eldest daughter\u2019s partner.<\/p>\n \u201cAmy relapsed. Ambulance are here. I woke up to her barely breathing,\u201d one of the texts read.<\/p>\n Sposito called him immediately and was handed to a paramedic. She would soon learn that her daughter, Amy Bowden, had been unconscious for nearly a day without any help.<\/p>\n The paramedic told Sposito they\u2019d gone to extreme measures to try to keep the 26-year-old alive, but she was already gone.<\/p>\n From her Newport home, it would take Sposito weeks to piece together how Bowden died. On the hard wooden floor of a bedroom hundreds of kilometres from where she grew up, Bowden had overdosed<\/a> on heroin.<\/p>\n Her partner, South Australian man Ethan Ross, had found her unresponsive but did not call Triple Zero. Instead, he called a drug dealer and injected her with methamphetamine to try to reverse the effects of the \u201cdowner\u201d with an \u201cupper\u201d.<\/p>\n A couple of years earlier, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bowden \u2013 pursuing her dreams of studying pharmaceutical science at RMIT University \u2013 fell into depression, leading her to seek out company through online gaming platforms.<\/p>\n She sought help from a psychiatrist, but influenced by people she\u2019d met online, she tried Xanax<\/a> and eventually began experimenting with other drugs.<\/p>\n She entered rehab for six weeks and was coming out the other side when she met Ross.<\/p>\n Related Article Within a matter of months, Ross was regularly at Amy\u2019s family home with an array of dodgy characters in tow.<\/p>\n Fearing for the safety of her family with a revolving door of strangers and drug dealers coming through the house, Sposito reached her limit. In October 2023, she told Bowden and Ross they needed to leave.<\/p>\n \u201cThat next day I spoke to Amy, saying you can come back any time,\u201d she says. \u201cJust not with him.\u201d<\/p>\n Bowden instead decided to relocate to Redwood Park, a suburb about 30 minutes north-east of Adelaide\u2019s CBD, with her partner. For him, it was home; his family and friends were all in South Australia. But Bowden didn\u2019t know anyone.<\/p>\n \u201cIt terrified me knowing that she was going to South Australia, because she had no one there,\u201d Sposito says. \u201cShe had no friends. It was only people that he knew, and I didn\u2019t know where they would go or what support she would have.\u201d<\/p>\n As responses from Bowden dwindled, Sposito knew she was losing her daughter to a man who, she says, was heavily involved in the drug scene and isolated her within it.<\/p>\n On that morning in February 2024, not knowing if there was any chance to save her daughter, Sposito begged the universe to let her trade places with her.<\/p>\n \u201cI was outside, waiting, calling on the gods to just take me instead. Please, just leave Amy. Just take me. I don\u2019t care. She doesn\u2019t deserve to die,\u201d she says, tears streaming down her face. \u201cIt was the worst moment of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the coming months, Sposito learnt that after Bowden overdosed, Ross heard what he thought was snoring and assumed she was fine. But hours later, when he couldn\u2019t rouse her, he didn\u2019t call Triple Zero.<\/p>\n Instead, he called a drug dealer, scored some methamphetamine and took her life into his hands. It was 24 hours between the time she suffered the initial overdose<\/a> and when he finally called an ambulance.<\/p>\n After Bowden was pronounced dead, Ross was arrested and charged \u2013 but not with causing her death. Instead, he was charged with, and later pleaded guilty to, administering a controlled drug to a person. He received a prison sentence of nine months.<\/p>\n \u201cI bear in mind that the neglect on your part, that dangerous decision to administer methylamphetamine rather than to call for emergency medical assistance, does not form part of the charge to which you have pleaded guilty,\u201d the sentencing judge said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are not charged with performing an act that endangered life, or performing an act that contributed to Ms Bowden\u2019s passing. You are not charged with criminal neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n He remained in custody until further charges of supplying drugs to a child were dropped by prosecutors last month, with an impending trial also vacated. He is now a free man.<\/p>\n If Bowden had died in Victoria, her boyfriend could have been charged completely differently. But in South Australia, there is no clear law to criminalise the failure to call for medical assistance when someone is in dire need of help. That is something Bowden\u2019s parents are now fighting to change.<\/p>\n From her family home in Melbourne, Sposito is petitioning for law reform in South Australia to criminalise the failure to call emergency services in situations where a person\u2019s life is at risk. <\/p>\n \u201cKnowing that Amy\u2019s death was needless and a result of neglect brings a trauma that cannot even be fathomed,\u201d she wrote in a letter to South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and Attorney-General Kyam Maher begging for change.<\/p>\n \u201cReform would recognise that in intimate relationships, responsibility does not end when violence or a medical crisis occurs. A clear statutory obligation would reinforce that failing to seek help in a life-threatening emergency is not a neutral act; it is a serious failure of care.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked if the South Australian government would consider legislative change, a spokesperson said it had \u201calready requested legal advice regarding the current status and operation of the relevant legal provisions, including how the laws apply in different jurisdictions\u201d across Australia.<\/p>\n Those words, however, bring little solace to a mother who says she should not have to live without her baby girl, and who will continue fighting to ensure no other victims are treated this way.<\/p>\n Be the first to know when major news happens. Sign up for breaking news alerts<\/a> on email or turn on notifications in the app.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n![\"Michelle](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7a2eb960508bdea9f50bf64cc52f60c944e027d5.jpeg\")
Michelle Sposito was told over the phone that her daughter Amy Bowden, 26, had died in South Australia. Jason South<\/p>\n![\"Bowden\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/360d86db822e61d30fba3eb3dff1ec28175d26f2.jpeg\")
Bowden\u2019s friends and family described her as having been bright, cheeky and funny.<\/p>\n![\"Xanax](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/46192b7f0519682f6b393e56b05df13e976a8d37.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Bowden](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/6e33d04245e29f1902ad5ef561fbda735ca13498.jpeg\")
Bowden with family.<\/p>\n![\"Sposito](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0ca8e7237d3bd09a64d414de699b68b7119ebe3d.jpeg\")
Sposito is petitioning for legal change so no other family has to go through her family\u2019s pain. <\/p>\n