Dad scores $1 million NC lottery prize. Now, ‘his children will benefit the most’
A North Carolina dad scored a $1 million lottery prize — and now “his children will benefit the most.”
“I want to invest the money and leave it to my children so they can have a better life than I had,” Willie Pridgen Jr. told the N.C. Education Lottery.
Pridgen said he was “amazed and overwhelmed” after the hit the jackpot in the Red Hot Millions scratch-off game. He spent $10 on the winning ticket at Tony’s Tobacco Shop in Nashville, a Nash County town roughly 50 miles northeast of Raleigh.
It turns out, Pridgen’s ticket beat 1-in-more than 2 million odds to win the game’s top prize. He decided to take his prize in a lump sum of $600,000 and kept $427,503 after taxes, officials wrote in a Nov. 13 news release.
“My family is really going to benefit from this,” said Pridgen, who is from Rocky Mount.
It’s not the first time a $1 million lottery winner had a generous spirit. In 2021, a father of four considered spoiling his family after learning he was getting richer, McClatchy News reported.
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This story was originally published November 13, 2023 at 12:48 PM with the headline "Dad scores $1 million NC lottery prize. Now, ‘his children will benefit the most’."
