Laken Snelling admitted depriving her baby of oxygen as a judge reviewed four charges stemming from the infant’s 2025 death.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — A former University of Kentucky student-athlete admitted in court that she ended her newborn son’s life after an unexpected delivery, changing her plea to guilty on four charges nearly a year after the infant was found dead inside a closet at her off-campus home.

Laken Snelling, 22, pleaded guilty Aug. 21 to first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant. The plea shifted the case from preparations for a possible trial to sentencing, where Fayette Circuit Court Judge Diane Minnifield will decide whether to follow the punishment recommended by prosecutors. The Commonwealth has recommended 10 years on the manslaughter count, one year for abuse of a corpse, one year for tampering with evidence and 12 months for concealing the birth. Snelling is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 16.

The plea hearing produced the most direct public account Snelling has given of what happened after she delivered the boy alone on Aug. 27, 2025. As Minnifield questioned her about the factual basis for the charges, Snelling became emotional and said the birth had been unexpected and that she had been under significant emotional stress. She acknowledged that instead of seeking help for the child, she caused his death. When the judge pressed for the conduct underlying the manslaughter plea, Snelling said, “I deprived him of oxygen.” She also acknowledged cleaning the room afterward and failing to tell anyone about the birth.

That admission was more specific than the account investigators said Snelling initially gave after police were called to a residence in the 400 block of Park Avenue. According to previously reported court records, Snelling told investigators she had given birth in her bedroom in the early morning hours and later passed out on top of the child. She said that when she awoke, she saw that the infant was changing color and believed he had died. Police records said she then wrapped the child in a towel and later placed his body and items used during cleanup inside a black plastic bag that was put in a closet.

The discovery began with Snelling’s roommates, who had heard unusual sounds coming from her room hours earlier. Court records described messages among the roommates in a Snapchat group conversation beginning around 4 a.m. One roommate reported hearing a loud sound as if something had fallen. Another said the disturbance had been strong enough to knock a picture from a wall, and the noises were reported to have continued for roughly an hour. Later that morning, Snelling told the group she had passed out because she had not eaten and was not feeling well.

The roommates remained curious about what had happened and entered the bedroom after Snelling left. Records reviewed by news organizations said they found signs that a birth had taken place and then located the newborn inside bags in the closet. Police were called at about 10:30 a.m. Officers responding to the Park Avenue home found the infant and had him pronounced dead at the scene. The Lexington Police Department later identified Snelling as the baby’s mother. She was 21 at the time and was then enrolled at the University of Kentucky.

The legal case initially centered not on homicide but on what investigators said happened after the birth. Snelling was arrested Aug. 31, 2025, on charges of abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant. Police said she acknowledged cleaning evidence from the delivery and putting the materials, along with the infant wrapped in a towel, into a trash bag. At that stage, investigators had not publicly established whether the baby had been born alive or precisely how he had died, issues that became critical to whether a homicide charge could be brought.

Months of forensic work changed the case. In March, Lexington police announced that the Kentucky Medical Examiner’s Office had determined the infant was born alive and died from asphyxia by undetermined means. The wording is significant: the medical finding established asphyxia as the cause of death but did not identify a specific mechanism. On March 10, a Fayette County grand jury indicted Snelling on first-degree manslaughter in addition to the three original charges. She entered a not-guilty plea at an April arraignment before later reaching the agreement that produced her August guilty plea.

The indictment also contained an important legal qualification. Records obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader said the grand jury proceeded under a first-degree manslaughter theory and referred to Snelling as acting under the influence of “extreme emotional disturbance.” In Kentucky criminal law, that language is a legal concept connected to the level of homicide charged; it should not be read as a medical diagnosis. Fayette Commonwealth’s Attorney Kimberly Baird said earlier in the case that the law did not require a psychiatric evaluation for that legal provision, and the indictment did not state that such an evaluation had occurred.

Snelling’s status as a University of Kentucky student and member of the school’s STUNT program drew national attention to the case, but those details played no stated role in the criminal charges. She was from Tennessee and had been a student-athlete when the infant was found. The university later confirmed she was no longer enrolled. After her initial arrest, she was released on bond and lived with her parents in Tennessee under court-imposed restrictions. Following the March indictment, she was again booked in Fayette County and posted bond while the manslaughter case moved toward arraignment and pretrial proceedings.

The Aug. 21 hearing had been scheduled as a status conference but became the proceeding that resolved the question of guilt. Minnifield went through the charges and required Snelling to give a factual basis for her pleas. Snelling acknowledged both the conduct that caused the baby’s death and the steps she took afterward. When asked about the evidence that had been removed or concealed, she said she placed towels in a plastic bag. On the charge of concealing the birth, she told the judge, “I didn’t tell anyone.” Minnifield accepted the guilty pleas.

The agreement does not mean the prosecutor alone determines Snelling’s sentence. Baird’s office recommended 10 years for first-degree manslaughter and shorter terms for the remaining counts, but Minnifield will make the sentencing decision. WKYT reported that if the judge intends to impose a sentence beyond the Commonwealth’s recommendation, Snelling would have an opportunity to withdraw her guilty plea. The exact way the terms will be structured is therefore part of what remains for the sentencing hearing rather than something settled by the plea itself.

Baird said after the hearing that plea negotiations reflected risks on both sides of taking the case to a jury. A trial would have required jurors to evaluate the medical evidence, the accounts Snelling gave after the delivery and the prosecution’s theory of criminal responsibility. The earlier medical examiner’s language that the child died of asphyxia by undetermined means did not itself specify how the asphyxia occurred. Snelling’s later courtroom admission supplied a direct acknowledgment of conduct that prosecutors could rely on without putting the underlying homicide allegation before a jury.

The case therefore arrives at sentencing through several stages that carried different levels of certainty. Police initially knew a newborn had been found dead and that the mother acknowledged trying to conceal the birth. Medical testing later established that the child had been born alive and died of asphyxia. A grand jury then added manslaughter. Finally, Snelling abandoned her not-guilty plea and admitted conduct supporting that charge in open court. Those developments turned a case that began as an investigation into a concealed birth into a felony manslaughter conviction.

Snelling remains scheduled to appear before Minnifield on Oct. 16. Until that hearing is completed, the prosecution’s proposed prison terms remain recommendations rather than the final sentence imposed by the court.

Author note: Last updated September 29, 2026.