VISTA - The family of Martin Mendoza, an Oceanside man critically injured Sunday when Vista deputies twice used a stun gun during a struggle, turned the life support machines off Wednesday night after doctors told them he showed no brain activity.

"Basically, he's brain dead," said his daughter Jasmine Martinez, as she wiped away tears in the hours before the family turned off the machine. "He had a lot of bleeding to the head."

She said doctors told her they didn't know if the bleeding occurred as a result of Mendoza striking his head on the pavement or from the stun gun. Martinez said doctors told her an autopsy will determine how he died.

San Diego County medical examiner's Investigator James Buckley said Mendoza died at 8 p.m. Wednesday, and that the department had an investigator at the hospital with sheriff's investigators.

Mendoza, 43, worked as a tile-setter. He was a longtime Oceanside resident and was engaged to be married. His mother and siblings live in Chicago, where he grew up, said Martinez, 25, who lives in Texas.

Martinez said the information she has gathered about her father's death came from the hospital nurse, two friends that her father was out with before the confrontation with deputies, and news reports.

She said two of her father's friends told her he had gone out drinking with them and that by the end of the night his speech was slurred, and they parted company.

The San Diego Sheriff's Department has said deputies responded at 10 p.m. Sunday to a service station at 145 North Emerald Drive after Mendoza called to report that "someone was out to get him."

Sheriff's Lt. Dennis Brugos said no evidence was found to support the man's report that someone was after him.

When deputies tried to talk with Mendoza, he appeared to have some kind of "mental instability" and was placed in the back of a patrol car, Brugos said.

Mendoza allegedly began kicking the rear window, and so deputies took him out to try to restrain him further, Brugos said. Mendoza allegedly struggled with the deputies and one of them used a Taser to try to immobilize him. When that didn't seem to work, he was stunned a second time and then handcuffed and put in the patrol car again. Shortly afterward, deputies noticed he had stopped breathing and began life-saving efforts. Mendoza was taken to Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, where he remained until his death.

Martinez said she is concerned because her father had so many injuries including bruising to his arms, legs and cheekbone. She said his arms were swollen, particularly where the handcuffs were, and he had burn injuries from the Taser on his torso and a big gash on his head.

"I think it was unnecessary force," Martinez said. "I feel the cops did way too much. They shouldn't have done what they did. If they thought he was (mentally) unstable, they should have brought him to a hospital to get him evaluated."

The Sheriff's Department started using Tasers after deputies fatally shot three Latino men in separate incidents within five days in the summer of 2005 in Vista. About half of the county's 1,300 deputies have been trained in Taser use so far, officials said.

The Taser delivers a five-second electrical shot that briefly immobilizes most people, although not everyone. The stun gun is commonly described by law enforcement as a "less lethal weapon."

Its use has been questioned in some instances, particularly on people who appear to be mentally unstable or under the influence of drugs.

A nurse told the family that once Mendoza died, they would need to leave the room because the death was being investigated as a homicide and sheriff's and medical examiner's investigators would take over from there. Sheriff's homicide team members were at the hospital to accompany the body to the medical examiner's office.

Homicide investigators could not be reached Wednesday evening to discuss the case.

Martinez said she hopes to talk with the investigators looking into her father's death to get some answers.

Family friend Lupe Villarreal, whose sister was Mendoza's fiance, said the whole thing seems out of character for him.

He "wasn't a fighter and he wasn't a criminal," Villarreal said.

However, county court records indicate that a person with the same name and date of birth as Mendoza had 10 criminal cases, nine of which were filed in North County.

Martinez said she knew only that her father had recently gotten out of jail, but she did not know more.

Villarreal described him as friendly and family-oriented. Martinez said she had recently renewed her relationship with her father after her parents separated. She said she had been in contact with him by phone for four years but she is in college and they had put off meeting until this month.

Martinez said they had finally planned to meet later this week and he was going to finally meet his grandchildren and see her for the first time since she was 7 years old.

Martinez said after the autopsy and his body is released, she and his sister and brother plan to take him to Chicago where his elderly mother is and bury him there.

- Contact staff writer Yvette Urrea at (760) 901-4076 or yurrea@nctimes.com.