Two Cash in on $90-Million Jackpot in Powerball Lottery

WASHINGTON — A retired bricklayer with 17 children and 29 grandchildren said Thursday he plans to buy a country home for his wife with his half of the $90-million Powerball lottery jackpot.

Percy Ray Pridgen, 69, could speak only a short time before burying his head in his hands and crying. After disclosing his plan to buy a house, he said that “somebody’s going to have to tell me” how to spend the rest of the $45 million--$2.25 million a year, or more than $6,000 a day, before taxes for the next 20 years.

He will split the Powerball payoff with one other winning ticket holder, who said he wants to use part of his share to move to a place “with a lot of palm trees and a lot of umbrellas.”

Chuck Gill of Richmond, Va., said he, his wife and their 4-year-old daughter, Tiana, will travel immediately to Paris. “It’s going to be an early Christmas,” he said.

Gill, 35, added: “I’m going to try to give something back to my neighborhood because my brothers out there, they’re killing one another.”

He said he has worked as a barber and a government employee but has no job now.

Pridgen and Gill, each the sole owner of his winning ticket, will receive their first checks in about 10 or 15 days, said D.C. Lottery spokeswoman Beverly Hunt. The owners of the Washington liquor stores where the grand prize tickets were sold will each receive $25,000.

The Powerball game, played in 14 states and the District of Columbia, had not yielded a winning ticket in 16 previous drawings over the past eight weeks.

The winning numbers Wednesday were: 1, 3, 13, 15 and 29. The powerball was 12.

The odds of any one ticket being the big winner were one in 55 million, officials said.