A 22-year-old former University of Kentucky cheerleader admitted in a Kentucky courtroom that she killed her newborn son by depriving him of oxygen, then hid his body in a trash bag and told no one.
Laken Snelling entered guilty pleas Friday morning to first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and concealing the birth of an infant. Judge Diane Minnifield presided over the hearing. Prosecutors have recommended a 10-year prison term on the manslaughter charge alone, plus one year each on the three remaining counts. Sentencing is set for October 16.
Snelling, crying in court, offered a brief account of what happened. "I was under a lot of emotional stress and my baby came unexpectedly," she said. "And instead of helping him I ended his life and afterwards I cleaned up and didn't tell anyone."
When Judge Minnifield asked how she ended the baby's life, Snelling answered in three words: "I deprived him of oxygen."
Lexington police responded to an off-campus home on August 27, 2025, after Snelling's roommates called 911. They told the operator they had found a dead baby boy wrapped in a towel inside a black plastic bag stuffed in a closet. In Snelling's room, they also discovered a blood-soaked towel on the floor and a separate plastic bag containing evidence of childbirth.
Court documents show Snelling told medical staff the newborn had shown "a little bit of fetal movement" and made a "whimper" after being born. The baby was alive. She admitted she did nothing to help him.
The Kentucky Medical Examiner's Office later concluded that the baby was born alive and died of asphyxia by undetermined means. A Fayette County grand jury reviewed all four levels of homicide before settling on first-degree manslaughter as the appropriate charge.
Fayette Commonwealth's Attorney Kimberly Baird explained the grand jury's reasoning:
"They were given the information about homicide, the four levels of homicide, and then deliberated and decided that manslaughter, first degree, was the charge that should come out of the grand jury."
Snelling's account shifted repeatedly after her arrest. In her initial police interview, she claimed the baby had fallen on the floor after she gave birth and that she did not think he was "breathing or alive." She then changed her story, saying she had passed out "on top of the baby" and woke up to find him "turning blue and purple."
Neither version squared with what she later admitted in court, that she deliberately deprived the infant of oxygen.
Investigators also found that Snelling had taken several photos while she was in labor, then deleted them in what police described as an attempt to hide the birth. Asked in court what she did with the physical evidence, she said simply, "I put the towels in a plastic bag."
Earlier reporting on the indictment revealed additional details about the timeline: after giving birth at approximately 4 a.m., Snelling allegedly cleaned up the blood, showered, and left the house to go to McDonald's, all while her dead son lay hidden in the closet. Her roommates made the discovery while she was gone.
Snelling was arrested after the August 2025 incident and released on $100,000 bond. She remained free in the months that followed, even as the case moved through a grand jury and she was re-arrested on the new manslaughter charge. In April, she entered an initial plea of not guilty. Friday's reversal came roughly four months later.
Under Kentucky law, first-degree manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. The remaining charges, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and concealing the birth of an infant, carry additional time. Prosecutors recommended 10 years on the manslaughter count and one year on each of the other three. Whether those terms would run concurrently or consecutively was not disclosed in court.
Snelling was 21 and a senior on the University of Kentucky stunt team at the time of the baby's death. She is now 22.
Cases involving the deaths of newborns raise questions that reach well beyond any single courtroom. The legal system's treatment of infants born alive, and the obligations of those present at birth, has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years, as seen in the federal government's intervention in the Baby Gabriel case in Dallas.
The facts Snelling admitted to in open court leave little room for ambiguity. A baby was born. He moved. He made a sound. And the person responsible for his life chose to end it, clean up the evidence, and walk away without telling a soul.
She did not call 911. She did not ask her roommates for help. She did not drive to a hospital. Kentucky, like every other state, has a safe-haven law that allows a parent to surrender a newborn at a hospital, fire station, or police station, no questions asked, no criminal charges. Snelling chose none of those options.
Instead, she wrapped her son in a towel, sealed him in a plastic bag, and put him in a closet. Then she deleted the photos from her phone, cleaned the blood from her room, and, as the New York Post reported, went about her day until her roommates found what she had hidden.
Prosecutors want 10 years. Sentencing is set for October 16. Whether a decade behind bars is proportionate to the deliberate killing of a newborn child is a question Judge Minnifield will have to answer.
A society that cannot protect a baby who has already been born alive has lost something no courtroom can restore.
