Wife crashes her own funeral, horrifying her husband, who had paid to have her killed
Noela Rukundo is a Burundian-Australian woman who became notable for crashing her own funeral. In January 2015, she was presumed dead after her husband, Balenga Kalala, secretly paid several gunmen to kill her while she was in Burundi for her stepmother’s funeral.
However, unbeknownst to Kalala, the gunmen had refused to kill Rukundo, though they told him they had. They released her two days later and gave her evidence to incriminate her husband for his plans to have her murdered.
In Melbourne, Kalala prepared a funeral for Rukundo, who, he told members of the African community in Melbourne, had been killed in a tragic accident.
Rukundo, meanwhile, contacted the Kenyan and Belgian embassies to help her return to Melbourne. She also called the pastor of her church in Melbourne, to whom she explained that she was still alive and asked for his help.
After returning to Melbourne, she arrived at her house, where a final group of mourners had just left her funeral. When she stepped out of the car, Kalala put his hands on his head and looked scared. He asked, "Is it a ghost?" He touched her shoulder to see if she was really there, and jumped when he realized she was, to which Rukundo replied, "Surprise! I’m still alive!" Kalala screamed and began profusely apologizing to Rukundo, who called the police on him.
After obtaining a court order against him, the police secretly recorded a conversation between him and Rukundo in which he begged for her forgiveness and confessed to ordering the hit on Rukundo.
After being arrested, Kalala denied that he had ordered for Rukundo to be murdered. However, after police played the recording of him admitting to hiring the gunmen to kill her, he began to cry.
His explanation for attempting to have Rukundo murdered was that "sometimes [the] devil can come into someone to do something".
On 11 December 2015, Kalala was charged by a court in Melbourne with incitement to murder, and sentenced to nine years in prison; he will be eligible for parole in 2022.
Members of the Congolese community threatened Rukundo for reporting Kalala.
