Windsor — An 85-year-old woman who was hit and killed last fall as she crossed Route 5 to her mailbox was not in a crosswalk and didn’t yield to the oncoming car, causing the collision, according to police reports.

But the Vermont State Police crash reconstruction report and a Windsor police report on the crash that killed longtime Windsor resident Marguerite Tetreault also indicate that the driver, Arden Sanborn, 39, had “more than adequate time and distance … to stop or swerve,” and the case remains open.

Sanborn, also a Windsor resident, “took no action” to avoid hitting Tetreault on Sept. 25, just outside of Tetreault’s home, as she walked across the state highway to get her mail, according to the reports obtained by the Valley News.

The report by Vermont State Police Lt. Barbara Kessler said Sanborn braked shortly before hitting Tetreault in the rural stretch of Route 5 near the Hartland town line. It also said Tetreault “had adequate time to perceive the hazard of the oncoming vehicle, but was not able to avoid it.” She was struck just before 11 a.m., and it was cloudy with light rain at the time.

The Windsor police report also said that Sanborn told police that she took methadone, which had been prescribed, and smoked marijuana hours before the crash. A police drug recognition expert who tested her for impairment three hours after the crash determined she wasn’t impaired.

Tetreault, who gave haircuts to elderly shut-ins in Windsor after retiring at age 80, died two days later at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

The county’s top prosecutor on Friday said he lacks probable cause to charge Sanborn with a crime, but said the case remains open.

“There are more question marks than there are answers,” Windsor County State’s Attorney David Cahill said. “When there are that many question marks, it’s not appropriate to bring a criminal charge, even though we may strongly suspect that something was amiss.”

Sanborn, who was driving a small Chevy sedan, told police she sent her husband a text from a store’s parking lot prior to traveling north on Route 5 just moments before the incident. A cellphone records check didn’t indicate that calls or text messages were sent or received around the time of the crash, according to the report written by Windsor police officer Jonathan Adams.

“We don’t know for a fact either way that a phone played a role in non-reaction,” Cahill said.

The reports said Sanborn was driving 40 to 45 mph, obeying the speed limit, and given weather and visibility conditions that day, “had more than adequate time” — at least six seconds — to try to avoid hitting Tetreault, Kessler wrote. Sanborn took no such action “to avoid the pedestrian,” Kessler wrote, but did apply her brakes just before the crash.

Police cited Sanborn after the crash for operating a vehicle without liability insurance, which is required in Vermont.

Adams said in his report that Sanborn provided conflicting statements of what she remembers seeing just before the crash.

“In my training and experience, operators who make delayed observations are commonly associated with distracted driving,” Adams wrote.

Sanborn, who could not be reached for comment on Friday, took her methadone medication as prescribed from a facility in Lebanon around 5:30 a.m. on the morning of the crash, she told police, according to Adams’ report. An hour later, she smoked marijuana, she told police.

People can legally drive on prescription drugs so long as they aren’t impaired. Because there is no threshold for what impairment looks like in drugs, Vermont — and other states nationwide — has “drug recognition experts,” police officers with special training who test for impairment in drivers.

The crash was reported shortly before 11 a.m. A DRE responded to Mt. Ascutney Hospital to test Sanborn for impairment around 1:50 p.m., according to the report. Sanborn had been taken there to be treated for a possible panic attack after the crash. At the hospital, she showed no signs of impairment, according to Adams’ report.

Cahill said the state has an inadequate number of DREs, and that ideally, there should be one in every town to improve their response rate to calls.

Cahill declined to release copies of Kessler’s and Adams’ reports because he said his investigation into whether to charge Sanborn remains ongoing until the three-year statute of limitations runs out. He said he may learn of more information at a later date that could alter the outcome of the case.

Messages left for Windsor Police Chief Bill Sampson were not immediately returned.

Tetreault’s family said they had no comment on the police findings.

Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.