Lottery won twice in one day by mum
Winning the lottery once in a lifetime is improbable, but winning twice in one day just seems like crazy talk (1 in 44,000,000!) However, Kimberly Morris of Wake Forest, North Carolina has defied these monstrous odds.
Kimberly Morris won $10,000 and $1 million in the space of a few hours.
On Monday, the mother of three bought a $4,000,000 Diamond Dazzler ticket from a Harris Teeter supermarket. To her surprise, she won $10,000. Morris quickly drove to the North Carolina Education Lottery headquarters in Raleigh to claim her prize.
“I was shocked,” she told the North Carolina Education Lottery. “It felt really great to win, but I really have always dreamed I would win $1 million!”
As she drove home to Wake Forest, Morris decided to try her luck once more. She stopped at a Quality Food Mart in Raleigh to buy a second $4,000,000 Diamond Dazzler ticket and became the first person to win a $1 million dollar prize from the $20 scratch-off game.
The first thing that Morris did was call her husband, John. “She was freaking out on the phone,” he recalled. “I couldn’t understand her, so I told her to slow down. When I realized what she was saying, I didn’t believe her at first. I had to come home and see it for myself.”
Morris returned to the lottery headquarters in Raleigh to claim her second prize and chose to receive the lump sum, which came out to be $417,012 after taxes.
Morris tells the lottery that she plans to invest the money and share it with her children.
It seems insane that this would happen twice in a day, but statistician Ronald Wasserstein of the American Statistical Association says it’s not that crazy.
“It is very unlikely that an individual will win two large prizes on scratch-off tickets on the same day, however, it’s very likely that it will happen to someone somewhere,” he said.
So, is there anything you can do to increase the chances of winning big? Yes, according to Richard Lustig, a seven-time lottery winner. He told CBS in 2013 that the secret is in picking your own numbers, and he penned a book about his theory.
However, Wasserstein, the statistician, said the only thing that can increase your chance of winning is to buy more tickets.
