Lottery player predicted his big win. He still checked ticket ‘five or six times’
A lottery player kept thinking he would hit the jackpot — then he really did.
Johnny Pearce couldn’t stop looking at his North Carolina ticket after he learned it was worth $130,000.
“I had to check it five or six times to make sure,” the winner told the N.C. Education Lottery in an Aug. 19 news release.
Pearce is a caretaker for his mom, and she was the first to know about his big prize.
“She was tickled,” said Pearce, who lives in Zebulon, a roughly 20-mile drive east from downtown Raleigh.
He scored the big win after stopping to buy a loaf of bread. While at the Compare Foods grocery store in Zebulon, he also spent $1 on a ticket for the Carolina Cash 5 game.
It turns out, Pearce’s ticket beat 1-in-962,598 odds to match all the numbers picked in the Aug. 17 drawing. The jackpot win fulfilled a prediction he often shared with his family members.
“I told them all the time I was going to hit the Cash 5 jackpot one day,” the winner said.
Pearce kept $93,275 after taxes. Now, he hopes to save his prize money and may go on vacation.
It’s not the first time a lottery player couldn’t keep their eyes off their lucky ticket. Another North Carolina winner “did a triple take” when his prize left him in disbelief, McClatchy News reported Aug. 18.
