Confronting footage has emerged of two hammer and machete-wielding African thugs assaulting a truck driver who filmed them during a road rage clash in Brisbane.
The incident took place in Runcorn on August 27 last year, just a day before one of the men, Congolese refugee Echibaketa Byamungu, 22, avoided jail for a savage attack on a bus driver.
The other man, Zambian immigrant Joseph Kalwisha, 24, was also previously spared jail over an attempted home invasion in Logan after a magistrate heard he suffered from trauma as a result of experiencing “extreme violence” and hardship in Africa.
Hammer and machete-wielding African thugs turn on a truck driver who filmed them attacking two Afghans in a road rage clash in Runcorn, Brisbane.
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— N News (@NoticerNews) August 28, 2026
The video shows Byamungu, who is wearing a white shirt, waving a hammer at two Afghan men and holding a long machete on busy Persse Road before he and Kalwisha spotted the truck driver filming them.
Kalwisha then ran over to the truck, reached inside the window, grabbed the keys and demanded the driver hand over his phone and delete the video.
In the ensuring struggle Kalwisha could be heard telling Byamungu to stab and punch the driver before the fight spilled out onto the road.
Noticer News understands the driver was bitten several times during the attack, while at one point Byamungu tried to stab him through the passenger-side window with a machete.
Kalwisha can also be heard saying “if I get up, one of you two are dying, on my mother’s life” after being overpowered by the truck driver and another man. Police arrived a short time later.
A witness said the men had another machete in their car, along with two small knives, a Taser and drug paraphernalia, and the vehicle had fake number plates fitted.
Both men were remanded in custody after being charged with common assault, attempted armed robbery with personal violence, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and Kalwisha is facing an additional count of common assault, and one count of threatening violence.
Byamungu has pleaded guilty to his charges and will be sentenced in Brisbane District Court on September 1, while Kalwisha’s case will be heard at a later date.
Brisbane bus driver is attacked by an African thug as horrified passengers watch on.
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A day before the attack Byamungu pleaded guilty in Brisbane Magistrates Court to assaulting the bus driver, and Kalwisha was filmed outside court abusing and threatening media while dressed in same clothes as during the road rage incident.
On August 28, 2025, Byamungu appeared in the same court via videolink due to being refused bail over the road rage attack, where he was given a six-month sentence suspended for 18 months, and ordered to pay the bus driver $1,000 compensation.
Kalwisha was spared a conviction for the 2022 attempted home invasion and sentenced to 18 months’ probation with court-ordered counselling to deal with his PTSD by Magistrate Tracy Mossop, who urged him to make the most of his new life in Australia, the Albert & Logan News reported at the time.
“Why someone with that [traumatic] background would choose to bring more difficulty into their life when they have been gifted the benefit of living in this country, which is not ravaged by war and violence, I don’t understand,” she told him.
“Why would you bring violence into this country?
“Maybe you do have mental health issues and if that is the case I am going to make an order to have a special condition on your probation so that you are rehabilitated. Because it is important that you live your best life here, not your worst.”
In March that year Kalwisha was sentenced to prison for separate serious offending that occurred after the attempted home invasion.
Header image: Left, Kalwisha attacking the truck driver. Right, Kalwisha and Byamungo and the two Afghan men (Noticer News).
