Nearly two months after an unidentified driver fatally struck Tanisha Brathwaite on her way home from work, her family is frustrated no arrest has been made despite information they received in a briefing a detective gave them on the investigation just hours after the crash.

“Why would you let him go if he’s a drunk driver?” said Terry Parker, the victim’s mother.

Brathwaite, a 31-year-old children’s book author and security guard, was killed at about 6:30 p.m.Sept. 14 as she crossed Clinton Avenue at the intersection with North Swan Street.

And then 36 minutes later and 7 miles away, a witness spotted a vehicle driving erratically at the intersection of Crossgates Mall Road and Western Avenue.

The witness called 911. After driving into the median, the vehicle struck a street sign and drove away.

“There was a street sign impaled through his windshield,” the witness said. 

The driver was charged with driving while intoxicated and traffic violations, according to the police report obtained from the Guilderland Police Department. The vehicle was towed by Albany police to their headquarters.

Police have declined to say if they have identified a suspect in Brathwaite’s death but officials familiar with the case say the driver in the Guilderland crash is a focus of the investigation.

No one answered the door Wednesday at the home of the man listed on the police report. 

Attorney Jonathan D. Cohn confirmed that he is representing the defendant in the DWI arrest. The Times Union is not identifying that individual because he has not been charged or formally identified as a suspect in the fatal crash.

Parker said the family went to Albany police headquarters after they had been told Brathwaite died and were given an account by a city detective that matches the narrative in the Guilderland police report. 

The detective pointed to the need to fill in the time gap between when the vehicle that struck Brathwaite was caught on camera in Albany and when the suspect surfaced in Guilderland a half-hour later. 

That gap, authorities told Parker, needed to be further investigated — a process that could be lengthy.

“For 30 minutes, he could have went somewhere else and someone else could have got into the car,” Parker said the detective told her. “He could have got out of the car and let someone else get into it.”

A city police spokesman declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. The department has previously said it is continuing to pursue leads in the case and are confident an arrest will be made. 

A spokesman for District Attorney David Soares’ office said he did not have information on whether a case has been presented to a grand jury to review evidence from the investigation.

City police have previously taken several months to file charges in cases involving fatal car crashes. A 16-year-old driver who was behind the wheel of a stolen car that crashed, killing 13-year-old Tea’shawn Walker in April was not charged until more than two months later. The teen was sentenced last month to 2 to 6 years in state prison.

Parker’s family has pointed at numerous surveillance cameras affixed to buildings and wondered why the units haven’t yielded evidence to support an arrest.

A meeting with an official from the district attorney‘s office, Parker said, was similarly frustrating, particularly since they acknowledged having dashcam footage of an unspecified vehicle as evidence. 

Brathwaite was born in Brooklyn and later moved to Albany, where she graduated from the University at Albany and held down two jobs as a security guard while pursuing her creative ambitions. She was walking to her Ten Broeck Street home when she was struck and killed. 

Parker and dozens of Brathwaite’s family members rallied last week at the site where she died, which is now marked by a memorial, and travel from Brooklyn to canvass the neighborhood and track down potential eyewitnesses.

Family members said they have identified several people who are willing to talk to the police and testify in court as needed.