Law enforcement officials said they discovered the body of the 16-year-old brother late Monday night at the family's single-story home in rural White Springs in north Florida. The 15-year-old's sister, age 11, assisted in the shooting but didn't pull the trigger, sheriff's spokesman Murray Smith said. A motive for the shooting, in the town of fewer than 800 people on the banks of the Suwannee River, remained unclear Tuesday.

White Springs police looked for the girls the night after a tip from the mother of a friend of the younger sister. The friend had received a "weird phone call" from the girl, saying she had run away and needed someone to pick her up from a Dollar General store, according to a police report. When the woman arrived, she found the older sister there, too. As she spoke, she applied makeup and "would not maintain eye contact and appeared emotionless," the officers wrote. But soon she started crying and told the officers that her brother had beaten her, thrown her into her bedroom, and locked the door. She told officers that when he went to sleep, her younger sister unlocked the door. The teen said she then shot her brother, according to the report. The teen told authorities the weapon was on a blanket in the hallway. Deputies found the brother dead in the living room.

A younger sibling, age 3, also was in the home at the time and was in state custody Wednesday. The agency is working with deputies to determine what happened and to help the surviving siblings, Department of Children and Families spokesman John Harrell told The Gainesville Sun. He said state law prohibited him from releasing details of any past incidents the family might have had with the department.

The parents were charged with child neglect and are accused of failing to supervise in the treatment of children, Smith said. He said the father is a truck driver and the mother had left with him on a trip. The home had no recent history of visits from the sheriff's office.