NASHVILLE – The third time proved the charm for a Chattanooga truck driver who hit a $2 million jackpot Sunday on a Tennessee Education Lottery instant game ticket, lottery officials announced Wednesday.
David Partain won the money playing the Mega Millionaire Jumbo Bucks game. The game costs $25 per ticket and has overall odds of 1:2.91 for a player winning anything.
“I saw it, but I didn’t believe it. I went numb,” Partain, a third-generation truck driver of three decades, was quoted as saying by lottery officials. He said he then notified his wife. “I called her and said, ‘I hit it.’ She thought I’d wrecked the truck.”
Partain won $25 on the first ticket, using that to buy a second ticket, which in turn netted him a free ticket. Scratching the third ticket in the parking lot of the Eagle Travel Center in Soddy-Daisy, he discovered he won the game’s top prize.
Lottery officials said Partain’s ticket was the 309th ticket sold worth $1 million or more since the Tennessee Lottery began operations on Jan. 20, 2004. Officials said Partain’s plans include buying his wife a house, paying off the loan on his truck and possibly a car for his 16-year-old daughter.