Brittany Carleo was buried last week with a floppy stuffed pig and a cellphone.

Her friends remembered the 17-year-old for late-night fast food trips and the one webbed toe that she proudly showed them.

They talked about her silly questions — Could people get paid for volunteering? — and her giving her 2006 royal blue Ford Focus her own nickname, Burt.

They remembered her as a child, but the blue-eyed girl bore a secret that left her bouncing from home to home, calling suicide hotlines and worrying about her reputation and her safety.

She wanted to get away from Scott Uslan, a 42-year-old sex offender and her ex-boyfriend's father, who had been sexually assaulting her for more than a year, police reports say.

He shot her in the head with a .357 Magnum on July 15 in the kitchen of the Tropical Smoothie Café where she worked. Then he turned the gun on himself.

The man she so desperately wanted to escape became forever linked to her in death.

Carleo started dating Chris Uslan two years ago, while they were at Port St. Lucie High School. From the time the two were together, Uslan's father was around, said younger sister Brianna Carleo.

"We did a lot of fun things with Scott," said the 14-year-old sister, sitting on her bed under a photo shrine to Brittany.

Brianna remembered one trip to Busch Gardens that the girls took with Uslan and his son. The dad talked the admission price down from about $60 to $10 for each of them, she said.

"He knew how to talk anybody out of anything," she said.

The dad told good stories, she said, some of which painted a threatening picture. She remembered a pitchfork tattoo on his neck and its accompanying tale that he joined a major national gang while in prison.

He gave Brittany figurines of pigs, her favorite animal, and a large portion of the clothes in her closet.

And he posed as their stepfather, signing for Brianna Carleo's tongue ring and the thick tribal tattoo on her sister's lower back. He also accompanied Brittany Carleo when she got his son's name tattooed on her ankle.

Brittany Carleo and Scott Uslan spent a lot of time alone, the younger sister said, and her sister and Chris Uslan sometimes argued about it. When Brianna Carleo asked what was going on, her sister told her not to worry, that it was none of her business.

In police reports, Brittany Carleo said the two had hundreds of sexual encounters, usually after she had been drinking and taking Xanax.

Brittany Carleo and Chris Uslan broke up after the boy was sent to a juvenile detention center in Polk County. He later moved to Colorado, where his mother lives. Neither he nor his mother could be reached for this story.

After his son left town, Scott Uslan didn't stop coming around the Carleos.

Brittany Carleo moved in with her aunt and uncle in part, the younger sister said, to get away from memories of Scott Uslan.

Barbara Martin said that when her niece lived with them for less than a week in December, Uslan came by the house every day and twice came to the door asking for the girl.

"I told her she couldn't stay if she couldn't cut it off," said her aunt, who has three children of her own. Brittany Carleo apologized as she packed her things to move back in with her father.

Her father, Frank Carleo, let Uslan into his house on Balmoral Court. Uslan had an excuse for everything, Frank Carleo said, even when he was accused of showing off naked pictures of Brittany Carleo. Uslan told the family some boys took the pictures when she was high on Xanax at a party. He was just helping her get rid of them.

The Carleos bought his story.

Both Frank Carleo and Pam Boyle, Brittany's mother and his ex-wife, have been arrested on domestic violence and substance abuse charges, state records show. Boyle was in jail on a trespassing charge the day her daughter was killed. She stayed with her ex-husband during the wake and funeral.

Brittany Carleo wrote in a journal that one of her mother's old boyfriends inappropriately touched her. The man sat among family on the plush green funeral parlor couches at her wake Wednesday afternoon. When the Martins arrived, they barred him from viewing her.

"She wrote some things in her diary on June 19, and we can't go against it," Barbara Martin told the man. He said nothing in reply.

No one spoke of the circumstances of Brittany Carleo's death at her wake and funeral.

Her casket was closed after the immediate family's viewing. Visitors were not allowed to see what happened to her face.