Just after midnight on March 19, 2025, Lincoln police rushed to an apartment near South 22nd and G Streets after a 13-year-old boy called 911 to say he and his mother had been shot. Officers found 40-year-old white Bu Gay, a female, gravely wounded and a man, 44-year-old Pah To, dead in a bedroom from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Gay was taken to a local hospital, where she died.
Investigators at the scene recovered a firearm and multiple shell casings as they began piecing together what had happened inside the home.
By that afternoon, detectives were treating the case as a domestic-violence murder-suicide. Two other children in the apartment a 15-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy were not physically injured and were taken to a child advocacy center to be interviewed. The 13-year-old underwent surgery and was expected to survive. Police said the adults lived together with the three children.
On March 21, authorities publicly identified the victim and the shooter as Bu Gay and Pah To. Court records reviewed by local media showed no prior domestic-violence reports involving the couple in Nebraska, and investigators emphasized they were still working to understand what led up to the shooting. Because the suspected gunman died at the scene, no arrests were made.
