By JAYMIE BAXLEY, Staff Writer
Screams of joy reverberated through a West End couple’s home after they learned they had won a large prize playing the Powerball.
According to a news release, Edward Gosselin Jr. was sifting through his morning emails when he saw a notification from the N.C. Education Lottery. The $3 ticket he had bought online for the July 18 drawing matched four of the night’s five winning numbers, along with the coveted Powerball number.
“I was just eating my breakfast when he told me,” his wife, Joan Gosselin, said in the release. “Then the screaming started.”
“My wife was screaming and we were both just surprised and a little bit in shock,” added Edward Gosselin Jr. “She kept saying, ‘We did it, we did it.’”
The couple netted $106,516 after required withholdings for federal and state taxes. They visited the lottery’s headquarters in Raleigh on Thursday to collect their prize.
Edward Gosselin Jr. said he and his wife plan to spend some of the money vacationing in the Midwest.
Five other Moore County residents have won big lottery prizes this year, most of them through Cash 5 drawings. They include:
• Phillip Williams of Southern Pines, who won $757,128 in a Cash 5 drawing in April;
• Timothy Sanders of Southern Pines, and James Smith and Samphant Vanamathi, both of Pinehurst, who each won $100,000 in Cash 5 drawings in March;
• Steven Richter of Jackson Springs, won $100,000 from a scratch-off lottery game in March.
Moore County received over $4.8 million in lottery funds to support education in 2021. About $3.2 million of that was used to pay salaries for non-instructional personnel in local schools and $1 million went toward school construction projects, according to the lottery’s website.
Jaymie Baxley can be reached at (910) 693-2484 or jaymie@thepilot.com
