Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit says an OPP officer was driving dangerously when he pursued an SUV that had sped past a RIDE check in Guelph – but not dangerously enough to warrant criminal charges.

The December 2015 pursuit ended after about 40 seconds, when the SUV – which was a stolen vehicle – crashed into a telephone pole and a pedestrian before coming to rest on its roof.

It is believed that the SUV was travelling at somewhere between 128 km/h and 144 km/h in the moments before the crash.

The pedestrian was Grace Glofcheskie, a 24-year-old recent graduate of the University of Guelph. She was killed.

The driver of the SUV, Curtis Henri, had never had a driver’s licence. He ran away from the scene of the crash and eluded police for several days.

He was sentenced last July to more than eight years in prison for a variety of offences, the most serious being criminal negligence causing death.

Separate from that investigation, the SIU was looking into the incident to determine if Glofcheskie’s death was in any way caused by wrongful actions on the part of police.

On Thursday, they said that they had found no reasonable grounds to lay criminal charges against the officer who was chasing Henri’s vehicle – even while admitting that his driving was “objectively dangerous.”

According to the SIU news release announcing the decision, the officer could not be charged with dangerous driving causing death because, while he was exceeding the speed limit by 68 km/h or more at times, his actions were reasonable given the commercial nature of the area, time of day and road conditions.

“The factual context does not allow me to conclude that the driving amounted to a marked departure from the standard of care that a reasonable person in the same situation as the officer would have exercised in the circumstances,” SIU director Tony Loparco said in the release.

Loparco noted specifically that the majority of the pursuit occurred on Woolwich Street, a normally busy four-lane road which was quiet at 2:30 a.m., when the chase took place.

When the chase moved toward a more residential neighbourhood, Loparco said, data from the officer’s cruiser and other sources suggests that the officer began to slow down and back off.

“The full body of evidence does not furnish me with reasonable grounds to believe that the subject officer is criminally culpable for Ms. Glofcheskie’s tragic death,” Loparco said.

The SIU’s investigation involved interviews with 12 witnesses to the events, including six police officers. The officer who started the pursuit declined to take part.

Investigators also looked at forensic evidence, vehicle location data from the officer’s cruiser, and video footage from businesses the officer pursued Henri past.