It’s hard to tell what
the most shocking part of Noela Rukundo’s story is.
Is it that her husband
paid $7,000 to have her killed by hitmen because he thought she would leave him
for another man?
Or that the assassins
decided to pocket the money and spare her so she could live to tell the tale?
Or is it that Rukundo
confronted her husband, Balenga Kalala, at her own funeral before she had him
locked up for his murderous plot?
Nearly a year after
Rukundo, a Burundi native who lives in Melbourne, Australia, narrowly escaped
death and confronted her would-be murderer, she told BBC News the
unbelievable account.
“I felt like somebody
who had risen again,” Rukundo told BBC of the
experience of living to confront her killer husband on Feb. 22 of last year.
“When I got out of the car, he saw me
straight away. He put his hands on his head and said, ‘Is it my eyes? Is it a
ghost?” she said.
Days earlier, Rukundo had been in her
native Burundi for her mother’s funeral.
Saddened by her mother’s death, she
phoned her husband from her hotel room before she planned to turn in early.
“He told me to go outside for the fresh
air,” Rukundo said.
“I didn’t think anything, I just thought
that he cared about me, that he was worried about me.”
But, instead, it was a ploy for Rukundo
to step out onto the balcony, where an armed man waited for her.
“He just told me, ‘Don’t scream. If you
start screaming, I will shoot you. They’re going to catch me, but you? You will
already be dead.”
Rukundo was taken hostage by a group of
men, driven to a building, tied to a chair and questioned, still unaware her
husband was behind the plot.
“They ask me, ‘What did you do this man?
Why has this man asked us to kill you?’ And then I tell them, ‘Which man?
Because I don’t have any problem with anybody.’ They say, ‘Your husband!’ I
say, ‘My husband can’t kill me, you are lying!’ And then they slap me.”
Rukundo didn’t believe the hitmen until
they called her husband, who uttered orders that she says she’d never forget.
“Kill her,” she heard her husband’s voice
say over the phone.
“I heard his voice. I heard him. I felt
like my head was going to blow up,” she told BBC News.
Kalala is originally from the Democratic
Republic of Congo and moved to Australia as a refugee in 2004 after a rebel
army plundered his village and killed his wife and son, The ABC reported.
Rukundo, who has five children from a
previous relationship, also arrived in Australia that year and the two met
through their respective social workers.
They married, set up a new life for
themselves in a new country and had three children of their own together.
“I give him, beautiful and handsome, two
boys and one girl. So I don’t know why he choose to kill me," Rukundo
said.
As luck would have it, however, the
assassins stopped short of killing her because they refused to kill women and
children.
Instead, they left her on the side of the
road after two days in captivity, gave her a memory card with recorded
conversations with her husband about the murder plot, and ordered her to get
out of the country in 80 hours.
They proceeded to extort more money out of
Kalala and informed him that the deed was done, setting him up for the surprise
of a lifetime.
After Kalala told family and friends that
Rukundo had died in a tragic accident, he would see the woman he believed to be
dead at her own funeral.
“It was around 7:30 p.m. He was in front
of the house. People have been inside mourning with him,” Rukundo told BBC.
“I was stood just looking at him. He was
scared, he didn’t believe it. Then he starts walking towards me, slowly, like
he was walking on broken glass.”
“Then he said, ‘Noela, is it you?’ Then
he start screaming, ‘I’m sorry for everything!'” she recalled.
Rukundo reported the crime to Melbourne
police and on Dec. 11, Kalala pleaded guilty to incitement to murder.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Rukundo said she will find a way to move
on from the harrowing experience and care for her eight children.
“My situation, my past life? That is
gone. I’m starting a new life now,” she said.As luck would have it, however,
the assassins stopped short of killing her because they refused to kill women
and children.
Instead, they left her on the side of the
road after two days in captivity, gave her a memory card with recorded
conversations with her husband about the murder plot, and ordered her to get
out of the country in 80 hours.
They proceeded to extort more money out
of Kalala and informed him that the deed was done, setting him up for the
surprise of a lifetime.
After Kalala told family and friends that
Rukundo had died in a tragic accident, he would see the woman he believed to be
dead at her own funeral.
“It was around 7:30 p.m. He was in front
of the house. People have been inside mourning with him,” Rukundo told BBC.
“I was stood just looking at him. He was
scared, he didn’t believe it. Then he starts walking towards me, slowly, like
he was walking on broken glass.”
“Then he said, ‘Noela, is it you?’ Then
he start screaming, ‘I’m sorry for everything!'” she recalled.
Rukundo reported the crime to Melbourne
police and on Dec. 11, Kalala pleaded guilty to incitement to murder.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Rukundo said she will find a way to move
on from the harrowing experience and care for her eight children.
“My situation, my past life? That is
gone. I’m starting a new life now,” she said.
With daily news
