Store owner Navor Herrera stands inside the Las Palmitas Mini Market. Photo / AP
Store owner Navor Herrera stands inside the Las Palmitas Mini Market. Photo / AP
A tiny neighbourhood store in downtown Los Angeles sold the winning ticket for the Powerball jackpot worth an estimated US$1.08 billion ($1.7 billion), the sixth largest in US history and the third largest in the history of the game.
The winning numbers for Wednesday night’s drawing were: whiteballs 7, 10, 11, 13, 24 and red Powerball 24.
The winner can choose either the total jackpot paid out in yearly increments or a $558.1 million ($895 million) lump sum before taxes. Winners don’t have to come forward publicly but their names and the disposition of the money are public records, according to the California Lottery.
The winning ticket was sold at Las Palmitas Mini Market, which will receive a US$1 million bonus from the lottery. Lottery officials presented a giant symbolic cheque to store owner Navor Herrera and his family, and hung signs saying “billionaire made here”.
Asked about his million-dollar windfall, Herrera set his sights on the future.
California State Lottery spokeswoman Carolyn Becker (left), and director Alva Johnson at a news conference outside the Las Palmitas Mini Market. Photo / AP
“I have to make more bigger store, more items, good service for the people. That’s my thing now,” he said.
“The store is small” but the luck there is “big”, Herrera joked.
Located in the city’s Fashion District, the narrow minimarket is a few blocks from Skid Row’s scenes of homelessness and distress where thousands of people live in makeshift shanties that line entire blocks of the neighbourhood.
The 107-block district is both a centre of the West Coast apparel industry as well as a low-income area where small stores offer clothing, accessories and fabrics that spill onto footpaths. Bargain-seekers flock to the district, but many storefronts are shuttered.
The winner must come forward to the California Lottery to claim the prize — and should consider hiring financial and legal advisers, spokeswoman Carolyn Becker told reporters.
“And then we have to spend time vetting the winner to make sure it is the right person,” Becker said. “Integrity and transparency are incredibly important to us, so we will probably not know for months and months.”
A crush of reporters descended on the narrow minimarket, creating an early morning stir.
Lucy Jamil, who works nearby, came to the market after hearing the jackpot news.
“I’m very excited — very, very excited,” said Jamil, an employee at a store selling items such as backpacks, strollers and makeup boxes. “This morning when I woke up I was praying to God, you know, God willing it’s gonna be somebody who works over here.”
Final ticket sales pushed the jackpot beyond its earlier estimate of US$1 billion to US$1.08 billion at the time of the drawing, moving it from the seventh largest to the sixth largest US lottery jackpot ever won.
The game’s abysmal odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to build big prizes that draw more players.
The largest Powerball jackpot ever was US$2.04 billion ($3.2 billion) in November, also in California, making Thursday the second time in less than a year that someone in Los Angeles County has become a Powerball billionaire.
The last time anyone won the Powerball jackpot was on April 19 for a top prize of nearly US$253 million ($406 million).
