Second lucky Rhode Islander wins Powerball; jackpot was $60m
They say lightning doesn’t strike twice. But the Powerball lottery game apparently does, if you live in Rhode Island.
Someone in that state bought a Powerball ticket Wednesday night worth $60 million, said Melissa Juhnowski, spokeswoman for the Rhode Island lottery. The winner numbers were 12, 35, 45, 46, 47, and Powerball number 12. It was a $10 wager.
The ticket was sold a day after 81-year-old Newport resident Louise White stepped forward to claim her $336.4 million Powerball winnings from a Feb. 11 drawing.
The chance of matching all five numbers and the Powerball is about 1 in 175 million. Now it’s happened twice in one month in Rhode Island.
Wednesday’s winning ticket was sold at Quickets at 285 George Washington Highway in Smithfield, Juhnnowski said.
Alvaro Suruy, 23, has been working as an attendant at Quickets for the past four years. He said he was working an 11-hour shift Wednesday and can’t recall who bought the ticket.
The small store has never sold a winning ticket like this before, he said, but at least 40 or 50 people have stopped by to purchase Powerball tickets today.
But Suruy isn’t convinced that the store is any more lucky than it was Wednesday and said he doesn’t plan on playing the game himself.
“I guess if it’s meant to be for you, it’s going to be for you no matter what,’’ he said.
The winner has not yet stepped forward, but whoever it is will have the option of walking away with a lump sum of $37 million or receiving the full $60 million over the course of 29 years. The winner has up to a year to claim the prize.
If the winner takes the lump sum, the state will receive $2.6 million and the federal government will get $9.2 million in taxes this year. Otherwise the taxes will be deducted gradually over the years.
Louise White bought her ticket from a Newport Stop & Shop. She was taken to the store by a family member with a craving for rainbow sherbet. The jackpot was the third largest in the history of the game and the largest ever in Rhode Island. She elected to receive a lump sum of $210 million.
Powerball is played in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and the US Virgin Islands.
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