now, and I know they were bickering, but they were like two peas in a pod."

Brown said the two had grown up in the Chinatown apartment with their father, that they loved to go shopping or to the movies and that they often sang and played baseball together.

Their father, Mario Toliver Sr., was not home at the time of the shooting, family members said. Authorities said he is on probation for drug possession offenses and possession of stolen property. Full details of his criminal record were not immediately available.

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Police did not say Friday who the gun belonged to or how they believed the teen had obtained the gun.

At the time of the shooting, the teens were in the care of their grandmother, who was in another room andcalled for help.

Police have not yet released a motive in the killing, the eighth homicide in Oakland this year.

"They got into some type of altercation," their cousin Gregory Stewart said. "Whatever it was about, it shouldn't get that serious to pick up a gun and kill his sister."

Berkeley basketball coach Todd Walker, who works in a mortuary and routinely presents a "Scared Straight"-type program to at-risk urban teens at schools, said he met the boy last year when he spoke

at Barack Obama Academy in Oakland about the risks of dying on the streets. He brought props from his work, including obituaries, body bags, embalming fluid and pictures to drive home his point.

Walker said Friday that Mario Toliver Jr. was disruptive during the presentation, giggling and mumbling. "He was