Hollywood Icon John Singleton Has Died

Director John Singleton died Monday at the age of 51.

The Oscar-nominated filmmaker had been hospitalized in Los Angeles after suffering a major stroke on April 17.

Earlier on Monday, there was a false report of his death. However, a Singleton’s publicist Shannon Barr told Yahoo, “John is still on life support.” Soon after, Barr said the family made the “agonizing decision” to remove him from life support.

“It is with heavy hearts we announce that our beloved son, father and friend, John Daniel Singleton will be taken off of life support today,” his family said in a statement, “This was an agonizing decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John’s doctors.”  Singleton was also described in a family statement as “a prolific, ground-breaking director who changed the game and opened doors in Hollywood, a world that was just a few miles away, yet worlds away, from the neighborhood in which he grew up”

The filmmaker exploded as a writer and made directorial debut in 1991’s Boyz n the Hood, for which he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay. The directorial nod made him the first African American — and the youngest person, at 24 — to have been nominated for the award. The urban drama, focusing on the struggles of young men in South Central Los Angeles, starred Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne.

Singleton fell ill upon return to L.A. from a trip to Costa Rica and was hospitalized. While under medical care, he suffered a stroke.

His work includes Boyz n the Hood, Poetic Justice and 2 Fast 2 Furious. He also co-created the crime drama Snowfall, which is set in 1980s Los Angeles, for FX. He’s also directed episodes of Empire and American Crime: The People v. O.J. Simpson.

John Daniel Singleton was survived by his mother, father Danny Singleton and seven children: Justice, Maasai, Hadar, Cleopatra, Selenesol, Isis and Seven.