Inset: Betty Sue Snider (Louisville Metro Detention Center). Background: The residence on Home Park Drive where Snider lived with her three children (WHAS).
A 35-year-old mother in Kentucky will be spending time in prison after her three children were left alone for days at a time and forced to stay outside in the yard in “unlivable” and “inhumane conditions.”
A Jefferson County judge this week ordered Betty Sue Snider to serve three years in a state correctional facility for the treatment of her children, who were ages 10, 11, and 16 when she was arrested last year.
In July, Snider entered an Alford plea to four counts of wanton endangerment, four counts of endangering the welfare of a minor, and three counts of abandonment of a minor, Louisville CBS affiliate WLKY reported.
An Alford plea is functionally equivalent to a guilty plea in that it results in a conviction, but it allows a defendant to maintain their claim of innocence while conceding that the state has sufficient evidence to convict them at trial.
According to court documents obtained by the Louisville Courier Journal, the investigation into Snider began in August 2024, when administrators at the 16-year-old child”s school said she came in appearing neglected, dehydrated, and malnourished. Noting that the child’s two younger siblings had stopped coming to school, administrators notified authorities about the teen’s condition and said they were concerned about the other kids being in “possible danger.”
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Officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department at about 2 p.m. on Aug. 29, 2024, responded to the home in the 7400 block of Home Park Drive to perform a welfare check on the kids. Upon arriving, first responders said they located the younger siblings “without parental supervision.” They said the kids “appeared dirty, hungry, and had visible injuries.”
In an interview with police, the children said they had been sleeping outside behind Snider’s trailer home and would sleep in various areas, including in a tent, on a swing, or on chairs that were left outside, local ABC affiliate WHAS reported. The officers also noted that the inside of the home was “unlivable,” with bugs and trash visible all over.
Snider reportedly told police that she knew the home was “unlivable,” adding that she had not gone in the residence in several months.
“[Snider] admitted to not being at the location for extended periods of time,” police wrote in their report, per the Courier Journal.
Following Snider’s arrest, a neighbor told local NBC affiliate WAVE that she could often hear the children “outside at 4 in the morning, screaming and fighting with each other.”
The children’s great-grandmother, Mary Buckhammer, told the station she had filed multiple reports with police and Child Protective Services regarding the kids’ living conditions. She also said that, despite living on the same block as Snider, the mother would not allow the children to see her.
“I said there’s kids living outside, using the bathroom outside, don’t take showers, eats once they can get their food,” Buckhammer reportedly said. “Mother’s gone several days at a time at night. They really need help. They need somebody to do something.”
