MANILA, Philippines -- Antonia Marina “Tara” Santelices, the girl who valiantly resisted jeepney robbers and ended up getting shot in the head in 2008, died of heart failure Monday just days short of her 24th birthday.

Larry Santelices, Tara’s father, said his daughter succumbed to cardiac arrest at 4 a.m. Monday on her hospital bed at the Medical City in Ortigas Center, Pasig City.

“She had a kidney infection that led to heart failure, and it all started from there,” Santelices said.

On Tuesday last week, Tara experienced high fever and cough, and her condition started to deteriorate since, prompting a return to the hospital, Santelices said.

“We had no inkling. It was a shock to all of us,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, speaking in Filipino.

Since the attack on her, Tara had not been able to communicate with the family, although Santelices said he could see from her eyes how she had suffered. “For both of us, maybe this is for the best,” he said.

But her father said Tara’s death did not mean the end of the family’s quest for justice.

“We will ask the National Bureau of Investigation to revive her case,” he said.

A political science graduate from Ateneo de Manila University, Santelices, on the morning of her 23rd birthday on August 6, asked a friend to meet her at a fast food restaurant along Marcos Highway.

She and close friend, Joyce Elaine Mejias, both part of the all-girl band Saffron Speedway, then took a ride home to Cainta where they found themselves sitting next to a man who appeared drunk.

The man pulled out a gun and announced a holdup. Santelices instinctively resisted when the man grabbed her bag, and the man shot her in the face before fleeing with his loot, according to the police.

The Cainta police later reported that Tara's gunman died in a shoot-out with them on September 15 and declared the case closed.

The Rizal police chief, Superintendent Ireneo Dordas, said the man believed to have shot Santelices, Orlando del Rosario, had on him a .45 cal. pistol and four sachets of shabu and had been under surveillance days before the encounter.

But the Santelices family disputed this, citing disparities in the appearance of the slain man and the sketches of the killer based on eyewitness accounts.

Tara, who woke from a three-week coma following the attack on her, was later taken off the respirator and allowed to go home, where she had stayed bedridden.

Tara’s story had spurred friends, family and schoolmates to raise funds for her hospital bills, which grew to more than P1 million. Messages of support and sympathy also poured in on email listings and online communities.

Santelices said Tara’s wake would be in Arlington Memorial Chapels in Pasig City, although there were no immediate plans for her burial.