Inset: Laken Snelling (University of Kentucky). Background: Snelling pleads guilty in Fayette Circuit Court (Judge Diane Minnifield, Fayette Circuit Court 7th Division/Zoom).
A former cheerleader at the University of Kentucky has admitted to killing her baby boy before wrapping his body in a towel and stashing the remains in a plastic bag.
Laken Snelling has pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and concealing the birth of an infant, according to Fayette Circuit Court footage reviewed by Law&Crime.
A weeping Snelling delivered her plea before Judge Diane Minnifield on Friday, her voice breaking as she recalled her actions.
"I was under a lot of emotional stress, and my baby came unexpectedly, and instead of helping him, I ended his life," she said. "And afterwards, I cleaned up and didn't tell anyone."
Pressed by Minnifield for specifics on what she did, the defendant added, "I deprived him of oxygen" before "I put the towels in a plastic bag."
On Aug. 27, 2025, a 21-year-old Snelling gave birth to a boy at a home on the 400 block of Park Avenue, blocks away from the University of Kentucky campus in Lexington, Kentucky. She was a cheerleader with the college and originally from Tennessee, per her bio on the school's website.
That day, Snelling's roommates said 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 a lack of food, so she went to get McDonald's, per court records reviewed by Law&Crime.
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. They looked in Ms. Snelling's closet and located the deceased newborn baby placed in bags."
At about 10:30 a.m. that day, the roommates called the Lexington Police Department about the boy. 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."
She reportedly believed he was dead and "wrapped him like a burrito" to lie next to him because it "gave her a little comfort." Investigators later reviewed her phone and social media activity, finding pregnancy searches, labor photos, and other evidence of a concealed pregnancy.
However, when investigators later spoke with medical staff at the university, the officers 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."
Snelling was arrested days later. The child was later found to have died of asphyxiation.
Prosecutors have recommended a 10-year sentence for the manslaughter charge and one-year sentences for the other three charges. She is due to be sentenced on Oct. 16.
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