Laken Snelling appears at her sentencing hearing in Fayette Circuit Court, Kentucky (Law&Crime).
The ex-cheerleader in Kentucky who admitted to killing her baby boy before wrapping his body in a towel and stashing the remains in a closet has learned her fate.
Laken Snelling, 22, was sentenced in Fayette Circuit Court on Friday to 10 years in prison. She pleaded guilty in August to first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant.
On Aug. 27, 2025, Snelling gave birth to a boy at a home on the 400 block of Park Avenue in Lexington, Kentucky, blocks away from the University of Kentucky campus. She was a cheerleader with the college and originally from Tennessee, according to her bio on the school's website.
Snelling's roommates have said that on that day, they heard loud noises for about an hour — noises so loud that they apparently knocked a picture off a wall. Snelling told her roommates that she passed out from not eating enough, so she went to get McDonald's, court records reviewed by Law&Crime stated.
The roommates went into Snelling's room after she left, looking for the source of the noises, and "found a blood-soaked towel on the floor and a plastic bag containing evidence of childbirth." Inside the closet were the baby's remains.
At about 10:30 a.m. that day, the roommates called the Lexington Police Department. Court documents state that when police spoke with Snelling, she said she gave birth and then passed out on top of the baby. When she awoke, she said she found the child "turning blue and purple."
Apparently believing her child was dead, Snelling "wrapped him like a burrito" and lay next to him because it "gave her a little comfort." When investigators later reviewed her phone and social media activity, they found pregnancy searches, labor photos and other evidence of a concealed pregnancy.
Investigators also spoke with medical staff at the university and learned that Snelling told the employees "her baby displayed 'a little bit of fetal movement'" at birth and he made a "whimper," so "she 'guessed' the baby was alive."
She was arrested days later. The child was later found to have died of asphyxiation.
On Friday, Fayette Circuit Judge Diane Minnifield said that a presentence investigation determined Snelling grew up in a stable home and had no prior criminal record, per Court TV.
Minnifield told the defendant: "Sometimes we make choices and decisions, and there's a consequence for each of those. And, you know, sometimes those choices and consequences affect our future for the rest of our lives."
A crying Snelling in August admitted that she was "under a lot of emotional stress, and my baby came unexpectedly, and instead of helping him, I ended his life." She added that "afterwards, I cleaned up and didn't tell anyone."
Pressed by the judge for specifics about what she did, Snelling continued, "I deprived him of oxygen" and "I put the towels in a plastic bag."