Former Kentucky cheerleader Laken Snelling stared coldly ahead as she was pictured in a new mugshot after being indicted on first-degree manslaughter charges.
Snelling, 22, was arrested on Thursday in Fayette County, Kentucky, the day after she was indicted by a grand jury over the August 2025 death of her baby, who she allegedly left in her closet after secretly giving birth.
Snelling has been under house arrest in her parents' Tennessee home since September when she was initially charged with abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence, and concealing the birth of an infant.
She pleaded not guilty to those charges, and she has not yet pleaded on the updated manslaughter charges. Public records show she is set to be arraigned in court on April 10.
The former cheerleader at the University of Kentucky now faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted on the manslaughter charges and an additional 11 years for the remaining counts.
Her indictment this week followed a report by the Kentucky Medical Examiner's Office that found her baby was born alive but died from asphyxia.
Snelling made headlines last year when the body of her newborn son was discovered hidden in a closet in her off-campus apartment by her horrified roommates.
The cheerleader was first charged on August 30, 2025, three days after she gave birth.
Her roommates told police that they believed she was concealing a pregnancy for some time and said they heard strange noises coming from her room during labor.
After giving birth, Snelling allegedly cleaned up the scene and left her home to go to McDonald's.
Her roommates said they then discovered the newborn baby dead in a blood-soaked towel on the floor of her closet, wrapped in a plastic bag.
One friend said she reported to police that the infant was 'cold to the touch' when they found him.
Snelling was arrested when she returned to the apartment, and in her first police interview she claimed the newborn was stillborn.
She initially said she didn't believe the baby was 'breathing or alive', and then claimed to have passed out 'on top of the baby', and woke up to find him 'turning blue and purple.'
Snelling was believed by her friends to have been hiding her pregnancy before allegedly disposing of the newborn when she gave birth in August, police said. Photos from last April shows Snelling performing with UK's STUNT team with what appears to be a pregnant bump on her stomach.
In exclusive Daily Mail images, the former cheerleader was spotted in October walking the streets for the first time since she was placed under house arrest.
Snelling, 22, was charged on Tuesday by a Fayette County grand jury following a bombshell report by the Kentucky Medical Examiner's Office that found her baby was born alive and the cause of death was asphyxia.
Court documents said Snelling told investigators she wrapped her newborn up 'like a burrito' and 'laid next to it', explaining that she was panicking and it 'gave her a little comfort in the moment.'
Police later alleged that Snelling told a medical worker that her newborn had shown 'a little bit of fetal movement', and made a 'whimper' when he was born.
As officers continued to investigate in the days that followed, they executed a search warrant on Snelling's phone and requested access to her Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and a shared iCloud account with her mother.
The probe revealed that Snelling had made a number of Internet searches 'including different things pertaining to pregnancy', the search also uncovered 'images of her during labor, photos of her doing things ordinary pregnant woman should not be doing and a concealed or hidden pregnancy,' the affidavit said.
'Other items could have also been deleted in an attempt to hide any evidence of the pregnancy, birth and newborn baby,' Lexington police note, including information related to 'the birth of the full-term baby.'
Authorities also found that her phone contained 'images of her during labor,' which she allegedly 'deleted in an attempt to hide the birth.'
It is unclear whether Snelling, who has since dropped out of school, had told anyone she was pregnant.
However, unearthed footage from April shows Snelling performing with UK's STUNT team with what appears to be a pregnancy bump.
Snelling also posted images in June where her then-boyfriend, former college basketball star Connor Jordan, 24, where she seemed to cover her front.
She has not publicly disclosed who the father is.
But the Daily Mail previously revealed Snelling was previously in a relationship with college quarterback Izaiah Hall who underwent a DNA test to determine whether the baby was his back in September.