Lottery winner drowns with winning ticket still in his pocket | Abroad

American media report that. Gregory Jarvis, 57, was at the local bar the Blue Water Inn in Caseville on Sept. 13 when he won the $45,000 jackpot after playing a lottery game, local news station WJRT reports.

“A very nice guy, he was here every day,” co-owner Dawn Talaski told the news channel. According to Talaski, Jarvis returned to the cafe the week after his lucky day. He bought drinks there, but hadn’t been able to cash in his winning ticket yet because he didn’t have the right paperwork. “He couldn’t cash the lottery ticket because he didn’t have a Social Security card or because the card had expired. He therefore requested a new one,” Talaski told WJRT.

To care

She was concerned when Jarvis stopped coming by the way he normally did. “Sometimes he is working in the north. But he hadn’t been here all week and we were starting to worry,” Talaski said. According to her, Jarvis’s boss also came to check on the bar and said that Jarvis had not shown up for work.

Not much later, a resident of the town of Huron County found a body on a private beach. It was reported to police that the body had been found near a boat, later determined to belong to Jarvis.

“We believe he was tying up his boat and then slipped, falling on his head and landing in the water,” Police Chief Kyle Romzek said. Police say there is no suspicion of a crime. “An autopsy revealed that Jarvis drowned after hurting his head.”

Ticket to family

“Jarvis planned to use the lottery money to go to his sister and his father in North Carolina,” Talaski says. The winning ticket that Jarvis still had in his wallet has now been handed over to his family.

Lottery winners of prizes over $600, according to the Michigan Lottery Commission, must show photo ID and their Social Security card in order to collect the prize money.

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