Deputies have arrested a 23-year-old Black Diamond man in connection with a hit-and-run crash that injured a 60-year-old woman as she rode her bicycle Oct. 14 in Black Diamond.

The man is under investigation for felony hit-and-run. A judge set bail $5,000 at his first appearance Wednesday afternoon at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.

“We haven’t filed a charge yet, it’s still under investigation,” Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County Prosecutor’s Office, said Thursday afternoon. “The case has not been submitted to our office. He’ll be released pending further investigation.”

The Auburn Reporter is withholding the man’s name from publication because it is against newspaper policy to name suspects until prosecutors have filed charges.

The victim is recovering at home.

According to court information, Barbara Jimenez was riding her bike along Southeast 288th Street in Black Diamond at about 1:30 p.m. when a vehicle struck her from behind, propelling her onto the gravel and grass shoulder. The driver left the scene. Medics transported the injured woman to Valley Medical Center, where doctors treated her for a fractured nose, a fractured cheek, multiple contusions and lacerations, and a concussion.

Officers say the outcome could have been much worse if Jimenez had not been wearing a helmet. The impact cracked her helmet in five places.

According to court papers, officers found a a silver passenger side mirror casing on the ground at the scene of the accident, the word “Kia,” and several part numbers on the mirror casing. Officers contacted the Kia dealership in Renton, from which they learned that the suspect vehicle was a silver 2010 or 2011 Kia Forte.

Over the next three days investigating officers contacted every Kia dealership in King and Pierce counties, advising them to call 911 if a vehicle missing those parts should show up.

Deputies arrested the suspect after the service department manager at the Auburn Valley-Kia Dealership called police about a damaged vehicle he’d seen in the shop that matched the description of the car investigators were seeking. Deputies arrested the man at the Auburn window installation business where he is employed and later questioned him.

According to court records, a few moments after investigators showed the man a television news clip about the accident, the man, head in hands, said, “Did I kill someone? Oh, my god, did I kill someone?” He told investigators that he had been driving to his grandparents’ house that afternoon when he remembered that he needed to give his grandfather a receipt for medications he had bought. He said he reached into his glove box to pull out the receipt and took his eyes off the road. Just then, according to court documents, he heard a loud bang and realized he’d hit something with his car. As he told investigators, until he saw the news clip, he believed he had hit a mailbox. He said he panicked because he was driving with a suspended license. He did not look in the rearview mirror to see what he had hit but without reporting the collision.