Sergeant Ned Thompson, who served in the Sixth Precinct and was a first responder from the Greenwich Village precinct to the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001, died March 9 in Memorial Sloan Kettering Center of lung cancer at age 39.
A nonsmoker, he became ill with a respiratory problem in December 2007 and three months later was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“I’d do it again,” he told visitors to his hospital bed, referring to his Ground Zero response, according to a March 11 Staten Island Advance article by Cormac Gordon. Thompson was at Ground Zero for several days, working on the bucket brigade searching for survivors.
Edward Thompson, a Staten Island native, taught English for a while after graduating from Villanova University in 1990 but signed up shortly after for the New York City Police Academy and graduated in 1991. He served first in Staten Island but came to the Village, where he spent most of the rest of his police career.
He worked in the Sixth Precinct Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit and rose to the rank of sergeant in 1994. He became supervisor of the Washington Square Park SNEU team and earned the respect of subordinates and precinct commanders. He earned the New York Police Department’s Commissioners Award for Excellence in 2006.
In 1998, he married Justine Gilroy, and the couple had four daughters. In addition to his wife and daughters, who range in ages from 8 to 2, his parents, George and Deborah, and his brother, William, survive.
