MONTEGO BAY, St James – The police yesterday posted a $500,000 bounty for the capture of the top members of the notorious Stone Crushers gang, whose leader Michael “Lassie” Forbes was cut down in an alleged gunfight with lawmen in St Mary Wednesday night.

The police said gang leader Forbes, who was hiding at a house in Oracabessa, was killed after he pulled a firearm from his waistband and aimed it at cops who had gone in search of him. (See related story on Page 3).

The gang, the police believe, was responsible for Tuesday’s terror in Norwood in which five people, including an elderly couple, were shot dead.

The gangsters, whose aliases the police released yesterday are:

. Kevin;

. Banga;

. Bungie, also known as Warren,

. Troy, also called Tribal; and

. Andrew, also known as Blacka Shine and Cox.

According to Superintendent Warren Clarke, the money would be disbursed based on the value of the information leading to the arrests of the gang members. He declined to say where the money would come from, but said that it had already been identified, and could be from a combination of private and public sources.

“The important thing is that the money is available, and we expect that this sum of money will attract those persons with information to come forward and help us,” the police superintendent told reporters attending a press conference at the Wexford Court Hotel.

In the meantime, the police, who have put additional patrols in the volatile sections of Norwood, said they were negotiating the acquisition of a three-bedroom house in the community to convert into a police post.

However, Assistant Commissioner Keith “Trinity” Gardner made it clear that while the constabulary had an excellent relationship with the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), there was no intention of adopting a suggestion by Member of Parliament Horace Chang that the community be flooded with soldiers and police.

“It is neither desirable nor practical to have soldiers and police on every street corner, we can’t keep them on the road indefinitely and my experience is that they (the criminals) just sit and watch until they are gone, then they come back with the guns,” Gardner told reporters.

Gardner, at the same time, dismissed rumours that the five were shot dead because they were police informers, and urged the public not to be afraid to come forward with information.

“There is nothing to indicate that the persons killed were killed because they gave information,” he said.

The police said that they were aware of four different motives for the killings, but declined to elaborate.

“We don’t want to add anything to that,” said Superintendent Wilford Gayle, who was also in attendance at the press conference.