This should be a headline in The Onion. But sadly, this story isn t fiction or satire   it actually happened.Mourners at the funeral of Noela Rukundo had the shock of their lives when the ceremony was gatecrashed by none of other than the presumed deceased. But no one was more stunned than her husband, Balenga Kalala, who believed he d gotten away with her murder.Five days before, Burundi-born Noela had left the home in Melbourne, Australia that she shared with her husband to attend the funeral of her step mother in her native country. She had no idea that Kalala had paid a gang of gunmen to make sure she never made it back to Melbourne alive.After hiring the gunmen, Kalala even played a major part in placing his wife in their sights. As the BBC reports:By early evening Noela had retreated to her hotel room. As she lay dozing in the stifling city heat of Bujumbura, her phone rang. It was a call from Australia   from Balenga Kalala, her husband and father to her three youngest children. He says he d been trying to get me for the whole day,  Noela says.  I said I was going to bed. He told me,  To bed? Why are you sleeping so early? I say,  I m not feeling happy . And he asks me,  How s the weather? Is it very, very hot?  He told me to go outside for fresh air. Noela took his advice. I didn t think anything. I just thought that he cared about me, that he was worried about me. But moments after stepping outside the hotel compound, Noela found herself in danger. I opened the gate and I saw a man coming towards me. Then he pointed the gun on me.She was thrown into a car, seated between two gunmen, a hood was placed over her head and face, and she was driven away at speed. After some time, the car stopped and the men began to ask her what she had done to make her husband furious enough to kill her. She refused to believe that her husband was behind the plot, so they called him and put him on loudspeaker. When they asked Kalala what to do with his wife, he answered simply: Kill her. Noela s life flashed before her. She had fallen in live with Kalala when he arrived in Australia as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2004. He had taken on her five children from a previous relationship, and the pair had since had three children of their own. Yet now, he was killing her?Just as Noela was coming to the conclusion that her life was over, the hitmen told her they would not kill her.Instead, they would extort more money from her husband, telling him their price had gone up   while giving her time to flee the country back to Australia. Noela says the gang told her: We give you 80 hours to leave this country,' Your husband is serious. Maybe we can spare your life, but other people, they re not going to do the same thing. If God helps you, you ll get to Australia.' And so it was that five days later, Kalala got the shock of his life. When Noela returned home, she found her husband receiving a steady stream of mourners at their home. She waited for the last to leave, and then approached her husband. When I get 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 replied: Surprise! I m still alive! Kalala was arrested, charged and eventually convicted of attempting to murder his wife. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.That same year, 63 other Australian women were not so lucky. Their male partners were successful in their plans to kill them. In the U.S., more than 1,400 women a year are killed by men they know, most commonly a current or former male partner. By contrast, women kill around 30 men a year. There is most definitely a gender component to this violence. This is an issue we must address, not only as a nation, but as a species.Thank goodness, in the case of Noela, that her assassins turned out to be her saviors. Featured image from YouTube Screengrab