Former University of Kentucky competitive cheerleader Laken Snelling took a new mugshot as she began her prison sentence for causing the death of her newborn baby.
Snelling, 22, was sentenced to 10 years in prison earlier this month after pleading guilty in August to first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant.
She will serve her time at the Fayette County Detention Center in Lexington, Kentucky.
Snelling was sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter and one year each for the other charges, but Fayette Circuit Judge Diane Minnifield ordered the sentences to run at the same time, rather than one after the other.
“I was under a lot of emotional stress and my baby came unexpectedly,” Snelling told the court at her plea hearing in August. “And instead of helping him, I ended his life. And afterwards, I cleaned up and didn’t tell anyone.”
A former member of the University of Kentucky’s STUNT cheerleading team, Snelling was arrested in August 2025 after her roommates discovered a “blood-soaked towel on the floor and a plastic bag containing evidence of childbirth” in her closet at their Lexington residence.
Snelling “admitted to giving birth” and “concealing the birth by cleaning any evidence, placing all cleaning items used inside of a black trash bag, including the infant, who was wrapped in a towel.”
After delivering the baby, Snelling said she collapsed on top of the infant’s body, waking up to discover the baby was “blue and purple.”
According to a police report obtained by Us, Snelling said “the baby made a ‘whimper,’ and that she ‘guessed’ the baby was alive,” at the time she gave birth.
Snelling was charged with manslaughter in March after it was determined the baby was alive at the time it was born.
The infant’s cause of death was determined to be “asphyxia by undetermined means,” according to the Kentucky Medical Examiner’s Office.
Snelling was ultimately not charged with murder due to the “extreme emotional disturbance” she was under at the time of the infant’s death, according to an indictment obtained earlier this year by Us.
The indictment said Snelling “intentionally abused the infant and thereby caused death to a person twelve (12) years of age or less, or who is physically helpless or mentally helpless.”
At the time of her arrest, Snelling was a student-athlete at the University of Kentucky majoring in Interdisciplinary Disability Studies.
