He was travelling from the station, it was there that he attacked by a grenade thrown at the car, but the heroic Franz batted away the grenade with the back of his hand, regrettably the grenade landed on the road beside the escort and exploded.
After the speech, Ferdinand insisted that he go and visit his men in the hospital. His driver agreed but was not educated in the route to the hospital, he managed to take a wrong turn near the hospital, once realising his mistake he stopped to turn around, when a young terrorist named Gavrilo Princip stepped forward and fired two shots. The first hit the pregnant Sophia in the stomach, she died almost instantly. The second shot hit the Archduke in the neck. He uttered only one word; ‘Sofia’—a call to his stricken wife. Then his head fell back and he collapsed. He died almost instantly.
The officers seized Principe. They beat him over the head, they knocked him down, they kicked him, scraped the skin from his neck with the edges of their swords, tortured him, all but killed him.
It was what the man deserved.
We spoke to the Driver of the escort car, which was destroyed in the grenade blast, ‘‘I was horrified when I heard what had happened, I felt very bad as it was partly my fault, if I had made an evasive manoeuvre to avoid the grenade there would be no reason for Mr Ferdinand to come and visit us here in the hospital. Mr Ferdinand was a wonderful person, always kind and considerate, it was terrible for the Black Hand to do such a thing.’’
All of the members in the terrorist group, the Black Hand, who were involved in the assassination, have been arrested.
There are many alliances between the countries in Europe, this assassination could cause a chain reaction spreading through many alliances until all of the different countries would be angry at each other.
This chain could end up in troubles between countries, fights, maybe even war.
