A police officer in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, on Saturday passes by the scene of an accident that killed a woman. Quan Liangbo / for China Daily

SHENZHEN, Guangdong - The truck driver whose vehicle ran over a woman three times before killing her has been put in criminal detention, local police confirmed to China Daily on Monday.

Many have raised doubts as to whether this was a mere accident or an intentional killing, as the victim was rolled over back and forth three times, as witnesses claimed and video footage showed.

The victim, a woman, about 20 years old, was run over by a truck moving in reverse gear, as she was sipping from a bottle of soft drink, standing at the gate of Zhifu Community in Luohu district in Shenzhen on Saturday morning.

After he had hit the woman the first time, the truck driver didn't stop but drove forward for a bit and came back to hit the woman twice more.

The whole process was recorded by the surveillance video system.

The woman died on the spot, having been run over three times, police said.

"The first time the wheel hit the woman's hip," said Liu Songbai, a security guard of the community who witnessed the tragedy. "At that time the safety guards, and the people waiting at the bus station cried out, asking the driver to stop. However, the driver drove on and this time the truck hit her head."

"I guess he didn't see the woman at the beginning and was flustered because I saw his legs trembling after he got out of the truck," Liu said.

"He was in his 20s, I heard the driver said he hails from Chaozhou (in Guangdong province) and loaded electronic scales at the fish market across the road."

Yang Jing, deputy chief of the publicity section of the traffic police department, told China Daily the driver was detained on charges of causing a traffic accident.

Yang Huilin, a lawyer with the Guangzhou office of the Yingke Law Firm, said that penalty would be decided only after probing whether the driver drove without a license, or if he was drunk.

According to Yang, the compensation for a death in traffic accident usually ranges from 400,000 to 800,000 yuan ($62,870 to 125,740) in Guangdong province.

Chen Hong contributed to this story.