Man shot in police chase had brother who was killed in similar way

A man who allegedly led Oxnard police and Ventura County sheriff’s deputies on a high-speed chase and rolling gun battle before they shot and wounded him Monday night had a brother shot and killed by police under similar circumstances in 2006, his sister said Wednesday.

Isabel Valdivia said she spoke with her brother by phone Monday night during the chase, then watched in shock as he drove by her house with more than a dozen police cars and a helicopter in pursuit.

Her brother, Augustine Medina, 46, a drywaller and lifelong Oxnard resident, is now in a Ventura hospital with two gunshot wounds to the head. He is expected to survive but with permanent brain damage, Valdivia said.

Oxnard police declined to comment or to confirm Medina’s name, saying the suspect in the chase has not been charged.

Augustine Medina’s life had been spiraling out of control long before the night he allegedly led authorities on a chase along city streets and freeways, his sister said.

All had been fine, she said, until the oldest of his three sons, Augustine Jr., was shot and killed, along with another man, at a party in 2003, in a still-unsolved case. Valdivia said her brother never recovered from the loss.

Three years later, Medina’s brother was shot and killed after a chase and gunfight with Oxnard police shortly after he was released from prison.

“Since he lost his son and his brother, my brother wasn’t the same person,” Valdivia said. She said he went to jail for several months in a domestic violence case, then on a drunk-driving charge.

“He was always thinking, trying to figure out why this was happening to our family,” Valdivia said. “We’d always tell him, ‘You have to get on with your life.’”

Valdivia said she saw her brother Monday night as he left her house to get gas.

A while later, the phone rang. “It was him,” she said. “He was telling me that he loved me. He told me, ‘I’m in a high-speed chase. I’m done. I’m through.’”

Valdivia said she heard sirens and a helicopter overhead and that her husband told Medina to pull over, that his mother couldn’t take another death in the family.

“I think he wanted to die,” she said. “I thought they were going to kill him, just like my brother.”

Valdivia said she is relieved that no one else was hurt in the chase, particularly the police officers.

“I’m so glad nothing happened to them. Who wants to be mad at the cops? They were just doing their job.”

sam.quinones@latimes.com