Lottery player wins big — and wonders if it’s a prank. ‘I started looking around’
A lottery player hit the jackpot — and wondered if it was a joke.
“I started looking around to make sure nobody was pranking me,” Timothy Marshall told the North Carolina Education Lottery. “I was shaking.”
But his $200,000 prize was the real deal, confirming his mom’s intuition was spot-on.
“My mom always said something like this would happen to me,” Marshall, a Raleigh resident, said in a May 20 news release. “It’s just unreal.”
Marshall won big after making one of his regular visits to a Sheetz convenience store in Raleigh. At the location on Falls of Neuse Road, he spent $5 on a ticket for the Mega Bucks scratch-off game.
After Marshall scored the game’s top prize, he said he will give back to workers at his go-to Sheetz. He also hopes to save money, pay bills and help care for his family.
“I want to put a smile on their faces,” Marshall said, per the release. “I know they’d do the same for me.”
Marshall, who kept $143,001 after taxes, joins other skeptical North Carolina lottery winners. For example, an email about a huge windfall left another player in disbelief, McClatchy News reported in 2023.
This story was originally published May 21, 2024 at 10:28 AM with the headline "Lottery player wins big — and wonders if it’s a prank. ‘I started looking around’."
