Brooklyn district attorney dies, days after disclosing cancer diagnosis

Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson died Sunday, only days after announcing he had been diagnosed with cancer, his family said in news release.

Thompson was 50 years old.

“As a man of intense faith, I intend to fight and win the battle against this disease,” Thompson said in a news release disclosing the diagnosis.Thompson did not elaborate about the diagnosis.

Sworn in as Brooklyn District Attorney in 2014, Ken Thompson was elected the borough’s first African-American District Attorney in 2013.

Thompson was born and raised in New York City, where his mother, Clara Thompson, was one of the first female police officers in the New York City Police Department to patrol the streets in 1973, and went on to serve as a member of the NYPD for 21 years.

Prior to being elected District Attorney, Ken Thompson served as a former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, where he was a member of the team that successfully prosecuted former New York City Police Officer Justin Volpe in the brutal 1997 beating and torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima.

Mr. Thompson also served as a Special Assistant to the U.S. Treasury Department Undersecretary for Enforcement in Washington, D.C., and in the General Counsel’s Office at the Treasury. He was on the team of lawyers and federal agents that conducted the investigation ordered by President Clinton of the 1993 raid on David Koresh and the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas.