Two people died while two others escaped after a vehicle they were travelling in fell off the Deka River bridge along the dilapidated Deka road which connects Hwange to Msuna on the Zambezi River on Tuesday evening.
The owner of the car, Mike Ndlovu and a woman only identified as Fatima died on the spot while Xolisani, a friend to Ndlovu who was the driver, and another passenger survived.
The Toyota Chaser reportedly developed a mechanical fault while approaching the bridge, resulting in the driver failing to control it.
It is not yet clear how the survivors escaped before swimming out of the water leaving the deceased trapped.
Police retrieved the body of Ndlovu and Fatima on Wednesday.
A village head Godfrey Dube appealed to authorities to urgently rehabilitate the road and the bridge across the Deka River which is now a death trap. Dube told NewZimbabwe.com:
I was at the scene when the bodies were retrieved. It was a male and a female. The road and bridge were temporarily closed as the search for the bodies were conducted until they were retrieved from underneath the water.
This road is bad, companies have destroyed it completely and now driving along the road damages vehicles and at the same time puts people’s lives in danger. It is now a death trap.
Last year, two people died at the same bridge after a vehicle they were travelling in veered off the road and fell into a ditch near the bridge after hitting a pothole.