By admin 
A former University of Kentucky athlete arrested after an infant was found dead in her closet pleaded guilty Friday for charges related to the baby’s death.
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Laken Snelling pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant. She was indicted on those charges by a Fayette County grand jury in March. She addressed the judge Friday and admitted to killing the child, but was hard to hear during an emotional statement.
“I was under a lot of emotional stresses and my baby came unexpected,” Snelling said.
Prosecutors on Friday recommended that Snelling be sentenced to 10 years in prison for manslaughter and one year for each of her other charges, bringing her total sentence to 13 years. Fayette Circuit Judge Diane Minnifield will have the final discretion of how long Snelling’s sentence will be.
Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 16.
Snelling, 21, was originally charged with concealing the birth of an infant, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse. The manslaughter charge was added in the indictment.
Snelling was arrested in August 2025 after police found an infant’s remains wrapped in a trash bag inside a closet at her home near downtown Lexington.
The Kentucky medical examiner’s office determined the baby was born alive and died of asphyxia, Lexington police said previously.
She was a student at the university — she has since withdrawn — and was a member of the school’s STUNT team.
Since her arrest, Snelling has been out on bond at her parents’ homes in Tennessee.
Fayette Commonwealth’s Attorney Kim Baird told reporters Friday that Snelling and her attorneys contacted the prosecutors’ office to discuss a plea deal. Baird said those conversations began before Snelling was even indicted, and the deal was crafted by Snelling and her attorneys.
“You never know what a jury might do,” Baird said. “A jury may, based on information presented, come up with something lower or may come up with a higher sentence, and that’s one thing that they have to contend and same for us.”
What happened in the case
Officers were dispatched to Snelling’s Lexington home at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 27, 2025, for a report of a “deceased infant,” according to a police citation.
The caller, who was unidentified in a heavily-redacted dispatch record, said she found a “dead baby” in the closet, and it was “cold to the touch.”
Snelling was a senior at UK at the time and studied interdisciplinary disability. She is originally from White Pine, Tennessee. She was a member of the university’s STUNT team, a new women’s athletic program derived from cheerleading that focuses on technical and athletic skills such as partner stunts, pyramids, tosses, jumps, tumbling and team routines.
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Snelling told police she gave birth in her bedroom around 4 a.m., and the baby fell on the floor, according to her arrest citation.
“She didn’t think the baby was breathing or was alive,” police said wrote in the citation.
About 30 minutes after giving birth, Snelling said, she passed out and fell on top of the baby, police records say. When she woke up, Snelling said the baby was “turning blue and purple,” and she told police she wrapped him in a towel “like a burrito” and lay next to him on the floor “because it gave her a little comfort in the moment.”
Snelling “admitted to concealing the birth” by cleaning up evidence, placing cleaning items and the infant’s body, wrapped in a towel, inside a trash bag, court records say. Baird thinks Snelling has accepted responsibility and learned from her actions.
“There was a lot of things going on that I think maybe she’s addressing and that hopefully this won’t happen again,” Baird said. “I get the impression that this won’t happen again.”
Snelling’s roommates reported hearing noises “that sounded like something had fallen” around 4 a.m. the day the baby was born, court records say. Snelling told roommates in a Snapchat group message that the noises were from her passing out because she hadn’t eaten and wasn’t feeling well.
After Snelling left the house, roommates entered her room and found “a blood-soaked towel on the floor and a plastic bag containing evidence of child birth, according to the police citation. They looked in Snelling’s closet and found the baby placed in bags. Police wrote that it appeared to be a “full-term baby.”
The baby was pronounced dead at the scene. Snelling was arrested later that day, and was taken to police headquarters for questioning and later transferred to UK Hospital for treatment.
“It should be noted that when speaking to medical staff at the University of Kentucky Labor and Delivery, she stated that the baby had a little bit of fetal movement, but passed out shortly after,” Snelling’s arrest citation said.
Police said Snelling “also told medical staff that the baby made a ‘whimper,’ and that she ‘guessed’ the baby was alive.”
The initial coroner’s report, released Sept. 3, was inconclusive for cause and manner of death. Further testing was required to determine those factors, Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said at the time.
Ginn said “extensive microscopic analysis” was required to determine how the baby died. His report confirmed the baby was a boy.
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