FORT LEE, Va. (WTVR) – A New Jersey man may have won the $338 million Powerball drawing, but three Fort Lee soldiers also won a $1 million prize.
Staff Sergeants Nathan Sutherland and David Jenkins and Sergeant First Class Robert Gallow got a special welcome at the Virginia Lottery headquarters Tuesday.
It turns out two soldiers have been playing the lottery for a while, but because the jackpot was so big, a third joined in. At first, they did not even realize they won anything substantial.
“Then I got an app on my phone. Yeah — I play the lottery all the time, so I got an app,” Sutherland said. “I was checking the app and I see that I got one number, then two, then three, then four then five. At first I was angry, I ain’t gonna lie. I was like, ‘Man I missed it by one number!’”
Scoring five matching numbers won the trio $1 million. That amounts to $333,333 split three ways.
The guys bought the ticket at the Tobacco Zone in Hopewell, so the store owner gets $10,000.
The soldiers say they are going to buy and pay off their homes and invest what is leftover.
