Residents and local media in Dazhou, the easternmost city in Sichuan province, are stumped over what really happened to a 74-year-old woman who hurt her leg in a fall in June.

On June 15, the woman, surnamed Jiang, fell in the street while holding the hand of a 9-year-old boy. The boy's father, Jiang Zhiyun, said his son was helping the woman, while the woman said the boy and two other children knocked her down.

She suffered a fractured leg in the incident.

Because the parents of the three children did not want to pay the woman's medical fees of nearly 20,000 yuan ($3,730), the dispute was not settled.

On Nov 16, She was carried her own son to Jiang Zhiyun's home, where she lived for two days to press him to pay.

Fed up with the situation, Jiang Zhiyun's family planned to move, and he called the West China Metropolis Daily in Chengdu.

On Nov 21, the newspaper published the story. On the same day, Jiang Zhiyun reported the case to the police, accusing the woman of extortion.

The next day, police said on their micro blog that the woman was not pushed but fell, which could be verified by three witnesses.

Police decided to detain the woman for seven days. Because of her age, she was not jailed, but her son was detained for 10 days with a 500 yuan fine.

"It proves my son is innocent. After the woman pestered me, I slapped my son in the face. Now, I feel sorry for that," Jiang Zhiyun said.

He said the woman's family was poor.

"Her son does odd jobs and her daughter-in-law polishes shoes. At the beginning, the woman asked for 200,000 yuan to settle the dispute," he said.

On Nov 23, the Chengdu Economic Daily reported that the woman swore she was not lying about the incident.

The next day, her family told the newspaper they would apply for an administrative review of the case, insisting she was knocked over by the children, although they could not find any witnesses to support them.

In the wake of the incident, sina.com.cn, a major news portal, conducted an online survey asking pedestrians if they would help if they saw a senior citizen fall. Only 14 percent of the respondents said they would.

"It pinpoints widespread distrust in Chinese society. People fear they'll be wronged, and many incidents have justified their fear," said Cha Youliang, a researcher with the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences.

In a well-known case five years ago, Peng Yu, a young man in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, was found responsible by a local court for injuring a 66-year-old woman.

Peng, seeing the woman lying hurt after a fall, rushed her to a nearby hospital.

But the woman insisted Peng was the one who knocked her down and sued him.

"It is important to praise the children for helping the fallen woman at a time when people are afraid of helping those in need," said Cha.

In early September 2011, an 88-year-old man in Wuhan, Hubei province, fell face down on the ground in a produce market, and no one helped him.

The man later died in a hospital of suffocation as his respiratory tract became blocked from a nosebleed.