At Least One Powerball Winner To Be ID'd Today

By Mark Memmott / NPR

Published November 30, 2012 at 4:57 AM PST

This story was published more than 12 years ago.

A Powerball lottery ticket sits in the machine at the 4 Sons Food Store and Chevron gas station which sold one of two winning Powerball lottery tickets in Fountain Hills, Ariz.

There's a noon ET news conference in Dearborn, Mo., at which Missouri Lottery officials are expected to announce who bought one of the two big winning tickets in Wednesday night's Powerball drawing.

There was about $587 million in the jackpot. Each of the winning tickets is worth about $192.5 million (before taxes) if the winner takes the "cash option."

As The Kansas City Star writes, "according to media reports and people in the community, the man who bought the winning ticket was 52-year-old Mark Hill of Dearborn." One of the winning tickets was bought in Dearborn.

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ABC News says that Hill "updated his Facebook account late Thursday, writing, 'We are truly blessed, we are lucky winners of the Powerball.' Within hours, his family began celebrating, telling ABC News Hill is one of the two big winners. 'Just shocked. I mean, I thought we were all going to have heart attacks,' Hill's mother, Shirley, said Thursday." She told ABC that her son "works in a hot dog and deli packaging factory."

The other winning ticket was bought in Fountain Hills, Ariz. But as KPHO-TV in Phoenix reports, "a surveillance video from a Marlboro, MD, convenience store shows a man in a yellow construction or highway worker jumpsuit celebrating what witnesses said were the winning numbers for Wednesday's Powerball drawing. The man reportedly bought the winning ticket in Fountain Hills while visiting Arizona."

Meanwhile, there's good news from Indiana about someone else who got a nice windfall from Wednesday's drawing. Huffington Post writes that:

"Larry Chandler of Highland, Ind., didn't grab the monster prize in Wednesday's record Powerball lottery drawing, but he's feeling thankful just the same. Chandler won $1 million of the massive jackpot, NBC Chicago reports. ... Before the win, Chandler was facing foreclosure on his home. Now, the electrician plans to start a college fund for his daughter, give some money to his mom and dine with his girlfriend at Red Lobster, the station said."