On the early afternoon of 9 August 1977 two heavily armed "drunken terrorists" / "nationalist guerillas" forced their way through the hospital main door. On their way, they had already killed a senior worker, put out someone's eyes and beaten patients outside the hospital building. They found Dr. Decker and her Austrian-born colleague, Sister Ferdinanda Ploner, a recently arrived South African passport holder, examining and treating patients in the dispensary. They demanded money. Decker gave them the contents of the cash till, but this was insufficient so she told the attackers that she had more money in her house which she would go and collect. While Decker and Ploner were walking to the house the attackers shot them dead using Kalashnikovs. Later it was established that Johanna Decker had been killed by a single shot, Ploner's death involved eight shots. As the war intensified, the murder of Hanna Decker resonated widely in southern Africa and western Europe, putting an abrupt end to the history of the St. Paul's Mission Hospital.