Tennessee Teens Win $3 Million After Splitting $30 Lottery Ticket
Best friends Wyatt Close, 19, and Brandon Thompson, 19, were carpooling to work on October 1 when they stopped for gas at a QuikTrip in Lebanon, Tennessee.
The teens, from nearby Carthage, decided to split a $30 lottery ticket.
The store didn't have the game Close had his eye on, so he settled on two Jumbo Bucks Titanium instant tickets and took them back to the van.
Tennessee Education Lottery
The first was a non-winner, but the second. "I saw those black bold numbers and just started jumping," Close told the Tennessee Education Lottery.
That $30 scratch-off turned into a $3 million win.
"I thought he was going to jump through the roof of the van," Thompson recalled.
Close and Thompson have similar plans for their winnings: save, invest, and build a home.
This isn't the first time two friends have split sizable lottery winnings in Tennessee. Two lifelong friends from central Tennessee—Janis Goodwin and Frances Davenport—split a $1 million Powerball prize that they won while vacationing together in Gatlinburg in 2005.
"It's always exciting to see our players win such life-changing prizes," Rebecca Paul Hargrove, Tennessee Lottery President and CEO, said in a statement. "But the biggest winners are the Tennessee students who have received more than 1.6 million scholarships and grants funded by the Tennessee Lottery."
Congrats, y'all!
