A mental health crisis ends in tragedy when police shoot a young mother wielding a gun.

Sitting in a car in the driveway of an East Salinas home, surrounded by police who had weapons trained on her, Brenda Rodriguez Mendoza called her mother on her cellphone and told her she wanted to die.

For weeks, the 20-year-old had been trying to climb out of an ever-deepening hole. On Feb. 8, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter she named Victoria Guadalupe, but the baby was placed in the care of the Monterey County Social Services Department because, her mother says, Rodriguez Mendoza was found to have drugs in her system and because she had no place to live. She created such a ruckus when the baby was taken from her that she was placed in the psychiatric ward at Natividad, where she remained for five days.

When she was released, her mother says, she seemed determined to get her act together.

“She was talking about fixing her life,” Mireya Mendoza says. “She told me she wanted to finish her high school diploma and become a CNA (certified nursing assistant) and give her baby a better life. And she was OK.

“I don’t know what happened. She was trying to do everything right.”

Two days before she died on March 1 in that car – a vehicle in which she slept, parked in the driveway of her boyfriend’s mother’s house on East Laurel Drive – Rodriguez Mendoza had run out of her bipolar medication.

“She had started hallucinating,” says her boyfriend, Pedro Rodriguez. “She punched me in the eye and scratched me, and then she left but she came back.”

On the morning of March 1, Pedro Rodriguez says he planned on taking recyclables to a center to cash them in, then return home to take Rodriguez Mendoza to an appointment at Social Services so she could begin working on regaining custody of the baby.

He wanted to do the errand first, and then come back for her, but the plan he laid out for the day set her off.

“We were outside and she started yelling at me, and my mom was just coming back from the store. She told me, ‘I told you I don’t want her here,’” he says. “She used to cause drama and yell, sometimes in the middle of the night, and the neighbors, you know, would hear.

“I climbed into my truck and she started banging on my window,” he says. As he pulled away from the house, he saw her standing against the car, crying. “I went to take the recycling and came back 10 minutes later and the police were already there,” he says.

His mother had called them. Rodriguez Mendoza had a weapon; while Pedro Rodriguez says it was a nonfunctional BB gun, Salinas Police Chief Adele Frese told the media at the scene that Rodriguez Mendoza “had at least one weapon. The information I have is she had a handgun, at least one if not more.”

Police arrived to the home on the 1000 block of East Laurel Drive around 10:45am. For several hours, officers and a crisis intervention team tried to talk her into dropping her weapon and surrendering to them.

It was during that time she called her mother.

“She called me and she was really upset. ‘I want to die, I want to kill myself.’ And I asked her why,” Mendoza says. “She said, ‘They don’t want to give me my baby back.’

“I told her, ‘Mija, you have to think about it. You have to fix your life and you’re gonna get your baby back,’” Mendoza says. “She said, ‘Mom, I don’t do drugs anymore, I don’t know why they don’t want to give me my baby back.’ Then she told me, ‘I love you, momma’ and hung up.”

At about 1:30pm, several officers opened fire. Rodriguez Mendoza died at the scene.

Police have not disclosed what triggered the shooting, and the case is now under investigation by the District Attorney’s Office, standard procedure following an officer-involved shooting. The officers are Bryan McKinley, Carlo Calupad and Robert Miller.

A social services official says the department would not be able to comment about the baby or Rodriguez Mendoza. At Monterey County Behavioral Health, prevention manager Dana Edgull, a member of the county Maternal Mental Health Task Force, is trying to get the word out that there are options and resources for pregnant women and new moms living with mental health issues, though she also could not comment on this specific incident.

“What we want to let women and families know is that there is help out there,” Edgull says. “Unfortunately it seems there are tragic events happening in our community, and folks have a reaction because of the tragedy and there’s even more stigma.”

Among the resources available: a call center (888-258-6029) staffed by bilingual social workers during the day and by other clinicians after-hours, during which callers can book a next-day, walk-in appointment at a clinic in Marina, King City, Soledad or Salinas. There’s also a specific maternal mental health “warmline,” (831-783-5922) run by peers via Parenting Connection of Monterey County, which offers free confidential support for new parents.

“We’re trying to make sure people aren’t afraid to come forward when they need help,” Edgull says.

Mireya Mendoza says she intends to seek custody of her granddaughter, and raise her along with her family in Mexico, where she lives.

“I spoke to Pedro, and he wanted to take her, but maybe she would be better off with me. She would have everything. She would have a good place to live,” Mendoza says. “I lost my daughter and she’s my little one.”

On Rodriguez Mendoza’s Facebook page, pictures of a chubby-cheeked newborn wearing a pink hat and a onesie decorated with pink ribbons appear, along with a one-line bio that reads: “I am a happy mom.”