His death was announced on March 3, 2017 by Moïse on his Twitter account. Family friends announced that Preval had died on the way to a suburban hospital in Port-au-Prince. His cause of death was initially announced as a cardiac arrest, but rumors of foul play resulted in an autopsy conducted in front of District Attorney Danton Leger at the request of Elisabeth Delatour. The autopsy was inconclusive but ruled out a brain hemorrhage or stroke. Further testing of specimens from Preval's body was announced by Leger, potentially sending the tissue to a foreign lab.