FREMONT, Neb. (WJW) – A single father from Nebraska won a $1 million lottery prize after buying a Mega Millions ticket while grabbing lunch last month.
Brant Edgington said he doesn’t usually play the lottery, but he decided to purchase some Mega Millions tickets along with a pre-made salad at his local grocery store in Fremont, according to a press release from the Nebraska Lottery.
He didn’t look at his tickets immediately after the March 22 drawing, so he had no idea that one of his tickets matched five of the winning numbers.
The numbers were 03, 08, 31, 35, 44, and the Mega Ball was 16.
The following weekend, Edgington went to check his tickets on the store’s scanner, but he said he couldn’t get the machine to read his ticket. So, he asked the clerk to check.
“They disappeared for a minute,” Edgington told lottery officials. “Then a different lady came up with her, and they just stared at me. She told me, ‘Don’t pass out when I tell you this.'”
He didn’t pass out, but he made sure to claim his prize on April 5.
Edgington said he’s a single dad, and he usually doesn’t have extra cash for lottery tickets.
“I don’t play all that often,” he said. “As a single parent, baloney is more important, financially.”
The jackpot climbed to an estimated $1.13 billion on March 25 after no one matched all of the winning numbers from the March 22 drawing. Then, a lucky person from New Jersey overcame the odds and won the $1.13 billion grand prize, breaking a winless streak that dated to last December. The numbers for that drawing were 7, 11, 22, 29, 38, and the Mega Ball was 4.
The prize is the 8th largest in U.S. lottery history.
It’s tough to win the Mega Millions jackpot because the odds are so long, at 1 in 302.6 million.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The current jackpot stands at $120 million.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.