Former University of Kentucky cheerleader Laken Snelling will serve 10 years in prison after admitting she ended her newborn son's life and hid his body in a closet trash bag.
A Fayette Circuit Court judge handed down the sentence Friday to the 22-year-old, who pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and related charges in the death of her baby boy, McCoy Cade Hall.
NY Post reporting said Snelling admitted ending the infant’s life by depriving him of oxygen. Judge Diane Minnifield imposed the 10-year term prosecutors sought. Snelling is not eligible for probation and must serve 85 percent of the sentence before parole consideration.
The case began when Lexington police responded to an off-campus home on Aug. 27, 2025. Snelling’s college roommates had found the dead newborn wrapped in a towel inside a black plastic bag stuffed in a closet.
What followed was a trail of shifting explanations, deleted photos, and, eventually, a courtroom admission that she ended her son’s life instead of helping him.
Breitbart reported that roommates allegedly heard strange noises around 4 a.m. during what they later understood was the birth. After Snelling left for McDonald’s, they discovered a blood-soaked towel and the newborn in the closet bag. They told a 911 dispatcher the baby was “cold to the touch.”
Court records described Snelling wrapping the baby “like a burrito” and lying next to him, which she said “gave her a little comfort in the moment,” before she hid the body and cleaned up.
Police said she took photos while in labor, then deleted them in an attempt to hide the birth.
Snelling first told officers the baby had fallen on the floor after birth and that she did not think he was breathing or alive. She later said she had passed out on top of the infant and woke to find him turning blue and purple.
Court documents show she told medical staff the newborn had shown “a little bit of fetal movement” and made a “whimper” after being born.
The Kentucky Medical Examiner’s Office found the baby was born alive and died of asphyxia by undetermined means.
Those details left little room for accident claims once the full record was in front of the court.
Snelling originally pleaded not guilty in April to abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and concealing the birth of an infant, along with the manslaughter count. She withdrew from the University of Kentucky and the STUNT team as the case moved forward.
In August, she changed course and pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and concealing the birth of an infant.
At the plea hearing, she stated the core fact without softening it.
"Instead of helping him, I ended his life,"
she said, according to WLEX coverage cited in the case reporting.
In court that August, crying, she offered more.
"I was under a lot of emotional stress and my baby came unexpectedly,"
she told the court.
"And instead of helping him I ended his life and afterwards I cleaned up and didn’t tell anyone."
Prosecutors recommended 10 years for manslaughter and one year each on the remaining counts. Judge Minnifield imposed the 10-year prison sentence.
The court heard the baby named as McCoy Cade Hall. A relative addressed the loss in plain terms.
"As a grandparent, you imagine the memories you’ll make with your grandchildren, first words, kisses, and all the little moments that become lifelong memories. You look forward to watching them grow and seeing the person they become. For Cade, those possibilities were taken away before he ever had the chance to experience them."
That statement put the focus where it belongs: on a newborn who was alive, who made a sound, and who never left that closet bag alive.
Snelling’s admissions, the medical examiner’s finding that the child was born alive, the deleted labor photos, and the decision to clean up and stay silent all point to choices made after the birth, not a mystery the system failed to solve.
Ten years will not restore McCoy Cade Hall’s life. It does establish that ending a newborn’s life, hiding the body, and concealing the birth still carry a real prison term in Kentucky, even when the defendant is a former campus athlete under “emotional stress.”
A baby who whimpered after birth deserved help, not a trash bag. Accountability, however incomplete, is the least the law can still deliver.
