By Tessa Redmond
Kentucky Today
Laken Snelling, a former University of Kentucky student who was arrested in connection to her infant’s death last year, will serve 10 years in state prison for ending his life.
Snelling pleaded guilty to charges of first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant on August 21, telling Fayette Circuit Judge Dianne Minnifield that she did not help her son and “deprived him of oxygen.”
On Friday morning, Judge Minnifield told Snelling her decision comes with consequences.
“And sometimes those choices and consequences affect our future for the rest of our lives, and you’ve made a decision that has affected not only your future but the future of all of [the baby’s] biological paternal side,” Minnifield said.
The incident occurred on Aug. 27, 2025, when officers were dispatched to Snelling’s residence in Lexington for “a deceased infant being located in a closet.” The infant was found wrapped in a towel inside of a black trash bag, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Kentucky Medical Examiner’s Office later determined that Snelling’s baby “was born alive” and found “his cause of death to be asphyxia by undetermined means.”
Neither Snelling nor her attorneys offered a statement at her sentencing.
“One of the concerns we had, this case has had some media attention and we just didn’t want to fuel that fire anymore by letters in support of her,” one of her attorneys told the court Friday. “So the fact that we did not submit anything, don’t take that as a reason she doesn’t care about what happened. She is incredibly, deeply saddened by what happened. She’s taking complete responsibility for it.”
Izaiah Hall, the baby’s father, told the court he does not wish the worst on Snelling. “What happened, it is what it is. I can’t change it. My family can’t change it. It hurts in ways that are unexplainable.”
Hall’s mother, the infant’s grandmother, said there were no words strong enough to describe the family’s heartbreak.
“Instead of watching him grow, we’re left wondering who he would have been. Instead of making memories with him, we’re left holding onto the few moments we had with him before his funeral…The loss of Cade has changed our family forever.”
She asked for accountability to be central during the sentencing, adding that no sentence could take away the family’s pain or give Snelling and Hall’s son the life and future he deserved.
Hall’s sister told the court her family didn’t even know about her nephew, later named Cade, until they received news of his death.
“The emptiness without Cade here with us is unfathomable…He was not garbage. He was the most beautiful, perfect, innocent full-term baby boy. We love and miss him.”
The state recommended 10 years for Snelling’s manslaughter charge and one year each for the other charges. Judge Minnifield accepted those recommendations and ordered the sentences served concurrently.
“This is a crime of violence. This is a crime that took the life of a baby innocent that did nothing, you know, did nothing but come out and breathe, and that’s it,” Minnifield told Snelling.
“You’re going to have a lot of time. You’re young, you’re 22 years old. You’re going to have a lot of life. This family of Cade is going to have a lot of life ahead of them, but this hole will never go away. This loneliness, this just now in the pit of your stomach, it’s never going to go away. You’re going to have to find ways to live with it and all of that’s only going to come by God.”
Snelling will have 415 days of house arrest credited as time served and will be eligible for parole after serving 85% of her sentence.