The family of the Oscar-nominated film-maker John Singleton has announced that he will be taken off life support on Monday.

The Boyz N the Hood writer-director, 51, had suffered a major stroke earlier this month and had been kept in intensive care ever since.

“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,” a spokesperson for the family said in a statement to Deadline. “This was an agonising decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John’s doctors.”

The statement also includes Singleton’s struggle with hypertension, stating that more than 40% of African American men and women also have high blood pressure, urging others to be aware of symptoms.

The statement calls him “a prolific, ground-breaking director who changed the game and opened doors in Hollywood” with a reminder that Singleton grew up in South Central just a few miles away.

With his debut film Boyz N the Hood, Singleton became the youngest director and first African American writer-director nominated for the best director Oscar. His other films included Poetic Justice, Higher Learning, the remake of Shaft, 2 Fast 2 Furious and Four Brothers. More recently, Singleton was the writer, director and producer of the drama series Snowfall.

“John was such a supernova in his youth that we forget that he was only beginning to fully assert his gifts as a director,” his family’s statement read. “Kurosawa was 52 when he directed High Low. Hitchcock was 56 when he directed To Catch a Thief. As much as we will treasure his body of work, we were looking forward to the films John would have made in the years ahead.”