Laken Snelling, a University of Kentucky cheerleader accused of abandoning her newborn, was not home when authorities discovered the infant’s body in the closet of a residence just off campus.
Authorities were called to the house in Lexington the morning of Aug. 27, after they received an emergency call from an unidentified witness about an unresponsive baby.
“Complainant just found a dead baby in a closet,” the caller told dispatchers, according to a transcript seen by the Lexington Herald Leader. “It is cold to the touch.”
When officers arrived on the scene around 10:35 a.m., they discovered the infant wrapped in a towel inside a trash bag in the closet, along with cleaning supplies. How exactly the baby boy died remains unclear nearly a month later. The Fayette County Coroner did complete an autopsy, it said, but the results were inconclusive.
Snelling, the baby’s mother, was not home when police showed up, according to the incident report. She was located within the hour, at which point she asked to be medically “checked out,” police said. Afterwards, she was returned to police custody and placed under arrest. She’d just begun her senior year at University of Kentucky, where she is also a member of the STUNT team
Snelling later confessed to giving birth to the boy, and then tried to hide it by “cleaning any evidence [and] placing all cleaning items used inside of a black trash bag, including the infant,” police said. Earlier this month, she pleaded not guilty to charges including concealing the birth of an infant, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse.
Nearly all abortions have been illegal in Kentucky since 2022, allowing the procedure only in cases of a life-threatening medical emergency.
