The former beauty queen is now facing four charges, including manslaughter in the first degree
A grand jury has voted to indict Laken Snelling in a case that has drawn significant public attention. Authorities say the charge follows new findings related to a newborn who was discovered in a trash bag.
A grand jury in Fayette County voted to indict the 22-year-old former beauty queen on multiple charges including manslaughter in the first degree, according to a press release from the Lexington Police Department.
The three remaining charges were given to Snelling at the time of her arrest in Aug. 2025 — abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant.
In the state of Kentucky, manslaughter in the first degree is punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison.
A grand jury in Fayette County voted to indict the 22-year-old former beauty queen on multiple charges including manslaughter in the first degree, according to a press release from the Lexington Police Department.
The three remaining charges were given to Snelling at the time of her arrest in Aug. 2025 — abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant.
The grand jury arrived at this decision after hearing that Snelling’s infant had been born alive, according to the LPD.
That baby was found wrapped in a towel and stuffed into a trash bag that had been stashed away in the closet of Snelling’s room, according to police.
The LPD also revealed that an autopsy report determined the infant’s cause of death to be “asphyxia by undetermined means.”
There is no word yet on when Snelling might be brought back to Lexington to be formally indicted on these charges.
Snelling has been on pre-trial release at her father’s home in Tennessee since October.
She had initially been granted the right to split her time between her mother and father’s homes, but a little over a month into that arrangement her privileges were revoked and Snelling was ordered to wear a GPS monitoring device.
Officers with the Lexington Police Department initially responded to an off-campus home, just a few blocks from the university, on Aug. 27, after getting a call about a baby that was found dead in a closet, according to a copy of an arrest report previously obtained by PEOPLE.
That call was placed by Snelling’s concerned roommates, who found blood in Snelling’s room after hearing her make strange noises earlier that day, according to the affidavits.
When officers arrived at the home, Snelling was nowhere to be found, having left her off-campus home to attend class despite just giving birth. Snelling ended up going to a McDonalds and parking outside a student clinic before coming home where she was detained and taken in for questioning.
It was a few hours after her arrest and while receiving treatment at the University of Kentucky Hospital that Snelling opted to waive her Miranda Rights and speak with police, according to a pair of search warrant affidavits obtained by PEOPLE.
One of those affidavits was filed on Sept. 4 seeking access to Snelling’s iCloud and the other on Sept. 8 requesting permission to probe her Facebook account.
Snelling said that at 4 a.m. on Aug. 27, she gave birth “to a baby which fell onto the floor of her bedroom,” according to the affidavits.
After giving birth, she stayed awake for another 30 minutes before “falling on top of the baby and going back to sleep,” said the affidavits.
It is not revealed how long Snelling was asleep in the affidavits, but she said that when she did wake up her newborn was “turning blue and purple.”
Snelling allegedly told the officer that she then wrapped her baby in a towel “like a burrito” and laid next to the newborn on the floor of her bedroom.
She said that this “gave her a little comfort in the moment,” according to the affidavits.
Snelling then went back to sleep until her alarm went off at 7:30 a.m., the affidavits alleged, at which point she cleaned up the blood and afterbirth in her bedroom, placed the towel-wrapped baby in a trash bag and her placenta “inside of a zip lock bag,” which she also tossed in the trash bag.
The initial autopsy to determine the newborn’s cause of death proved inconclusive, and the medical examiner’s report said that more testing would be required.
After her arrest, Snelling was held at the Fayette County Detention Center until Sept. 2, when the judge allowed Snelling to be placed on house arrest in Tennessee after posting a $100,000 surety bond.
Snelling elected to withdraw from the University of Kentucky at that time, a school spokesperson told PEOPLE.
Prior to that, she had been a member of the school’s STUNT team, which finished as runners-up at last year’s NCAA competition.
