Update: John Singleton has died. Read his obituary here.



The family of John Singleton, the director, producer and screenwriter behind the 1991 film “Boyz N the Hood” and several other movies, said that they had directed doctors to pull him off life support on Monday after he suffered a stroke earlier this month.

“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,” said the statement, which was released by Singleton’s publicist around 10 a.m. Pacific time. “This was an agonizing decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John’s doctors.”

Singleton, 51, a native of South Los Angeles, was nominated for an Oscar for his directing in his debut film “Boyz N the Hood,” which centered on three teenagers growing up amid violence in his home city. Singleton was in his early 20s and fresh out of film school when he directed the film. He was the first African-American and the youngest person ever to be nominated for the award.

He went on to direct more than 10 films and TV series, including the recent FX crime drama “Snowfall,” about the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. His most prominent films after his debut include “Poetic Justice” (1993), a romantic melodrama starring Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur, and “Rosewood” (1997), about a historical white mob massacre against a town of black residents in Florida.