81-year-old claims $336.4 million Powerball jackpot
Baku, March 7 (AZERTAC). An 81-year-old woman from Newport won last month`s $336.4 million Powerball jackpot, sleeping with the winning ticket in her Bible before coming forward to claim the sixth-largest U.S. prize today, a family representative said.
At a news conference at state lottery headquarters in Cranston, Louise White said little, calling herself "very happy" and "very proud."
Her attorneys said she was a regular lottery player who bought the winning ticket at a Stop & Shop supermarket in Newport where she had stopped for rainbow sherbet, her son`s favorite flavor. The ticket is being claimed in the name of the Rainbow Sherbert Trust.
White kept the winning ticket in a Bible after she realized she won and later locked it up in a safe-deposit box.
The winning ticket was among three tickets with random numbers purchased on a $9 wager and was bought on the night of the Feb. 11 drawing, officials said.
White said she wrote down the numbers when they were read on television after the drawing, but missed a few — so she waited 10 minutes to hear them again. She didn`t check her ticket immediately.
Louise White will take a lump sum payment of $210 million, the highest ever for Powerball, officials said. The jackpot was the third largest in Powerball history and the largest ever won in Rhode Island, officials said.
The top lottery jackpot in U.S. history was a $390 million Mega Millions prize won in March 2007.
The Powerball jackpot win is the first since the ticket price increased from $1 to $2 in January. Rising sales nearly doubled the jackpot from $173.5 million on Feb. 1. The Power Play option, which White selected, costs an extra $1 per ticket.
There is no bonus for the supermarket for selling the winning ticket. Instead of paying out a bonus, Powerball retailers in Rhode Island get eight cents on the dollar for every ticket sold.
Powerball is played in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The chance of matching all five numbers and the Powerball is about 1 in 175 million.
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