Anthony Dowe’s winning Mega Million ticket matched all five white balls. The odds? One out of 12.6 million.
A North Carolina man whose day began with a wrecked car after hitting two deer on his way to work closed out the same 24 hours by winning a $2 million lottery prize.
Anthony Dowe, of Leland, learned the news of his winnings hours after he got home from a stressful morning. “I hit two deer with my brand new car. So, I just got mad, went back home got into bed and went to sleep,” Dowe said in a release from the North Carolina Education Lottery, The Wilmington Star News reported.
“Then I woke up and checked my tickets,” Down said. "I checked the fourth ticket and I saw the ‘4’ and then the next number and the next number and the next number. “I’m like, ‘Wow!’ It was just crazy.”
Dowe’s winning Mega Million ticket matched all five white balls. The odds? One out of 12.6 million, experts said. Life got even better for Dowe when his $1 million prize doubled to $2 million when the 2X Megaplier ticket was drawn, the Associated Press reported.
Dowe, who works in shipping and receiving, told the Wilmington Star-News he had bought his winning $3 Quick Pick ticket at the Minuteman Food Mart on Mercantile Drive in Leland.
He claimed his prize at lottery headquarters in Raleigh on Monday, taking home $1,415,001 after the required federal and state tax withholdings. “It just feels great,” Dowe told news station WSOC. “I’m just gonna fix things on my mother and father’s house, and get my car fixed, pay it off and pay my niece’s car off.”
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