On the morning of April 26, Ball awoke with bad back pains then lost consciousness. After, she died at 5:47 a.m. PDT at the age of 77. Doctors thought that Ball had succumbed to a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm not that related to her ascending aortic aneurysm and surgery. Ball had been a smoker most of her life, making her risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm higher.