UPDATED: 4:30 pm. EDT — John Singleton was taken off life support and declared dead on Monday, according to multiple reports. He was 51 years old. The acclaimed movie director had recently suffered a stroke before being placed in a medically induced coma.
“A Singleton family rep says he passed ‘peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends,'” according to TMZ.
UPDATED : 1:29 p.m. EDT — John Singleton‘s family was preparing to him off of life support on Monday, the movie director’s representative announced earlier in the day. The announcement followed conflicting reports about the state of Singleton’s health Monday morning.
“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,” Singleton’s spokesperson told Deadline. “This was an agonizing decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John’s doctors.”
The Academy Award-nominated filmmaker suffered a stroke before being placed in a medically induced coma last week. As a result, his family was reportedly readying for an estate battle to control Singleton’s fortune, which was estimated to be worth about $30 million.
Read the full statement by clicking here.
UPDATED: 10:08 a.m. EDT — There were conflicting reports about the state of acclaimed filmmaker John Singleton‘s health. While some news outlets were reporting that the 51-year-old Oscar-nominated director had died, TMZ reported that he was on life-support and still alive as of Monday morning.
Original story:
As John Singleton was fighting for his life, his friends and family have reportedly been jockeying for position to control the filmmaker’s fortune worth tens of millions of dollars. TMZ reported he was near death Monday morning.
The 51-year-old Oscar nominee suffered a stroke on April 17 before going into a coma last week, prompting his mother, Sheila Ward, to file an application to “establish a temporary conservatorship for his estate.” The conservatorship would allow his mother to prevent a “substantial financial loss.” However, TMZ reported that Singleton’s daughter, Cleopatra, his current girlfriend, and his estranged father were all fighting to prevent Ward from getting the conservatorship.
SEE ALSO: John Singleton’s Family Moves To Protect His Assets
Ward is Singleton’s business manager and has denied trying to block Singleton’s children from his estate. The actor reportedly has four kids.
“Cleopatra filed a motion last week, attempting to block her grandmother’s proposed conservatorship, and claimed Shelia was trying to liquidate all of John’s assets and freeze out his 4 children,” TMZ wrote in an article published early Monday morning. “She also insisted her father was not in a coma and was improving every day.”
It was not clear if Singleton has a will.
Singleton was reportedly experiencing weakness in his leg after flying back from Costa Rica before he suffered his stroke. The long flight may have triggered the medical emergency.
Singleton is known for films like 1991’s “Boyz n the Hood,” which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. He was the youngest filmmaker to be nominated in those categories. He was also the first African-American to be nominated for Best Director.
Aside from directed episodes of “The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story,” “Empire,” and “Billions,” the Los Angeles native and father of four has won two NAACP Image Awards and an MTV Movie Award.
A stroke occurs when blood flow to an area of the brain is cut off, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains. It’s often described as a brain attack. Brain cells die when they are starved of oxygen.
Approximately 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke each year, making it the fifth leading cause of death for Americans. For African-Americans, however, the risk of having a first stroke is nearly twice as high compared to whites. Blacks also suffer the highest rate of death due to stroke. A stroke also occurs earlier in life for African-Americans compared to other racial and ethnic groups, according to the National Stroke Association.
Singleton’s net worth was valued at about $30 million.
We hope he gets better soon.
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