Twin Sisters Share $1 Million Powerball® Prize

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – West Virginia Lottery Director John Musgrave introduced twin sisters Pam Garretson and Penny Fitzpatrick of Crab Orchard as the state’s latest Powerball match-5 winners today in Charleston.

Garretson and Fitzpatrick, both 63, play the lottery regularly and actually shared a $100,000 Powerball® prize 12 years ago.

“We are so excited and could not believe our numbers came up,” Fitzpatrick said. “We play all the time and love the lottery.”

The sisters say they picked their own numbers and play them regularly enough that an employee of the store where they buy their tickets contacted them on Sunday to make sure they played their numbers and were indeed the big winners.

They bought their lucky ticket at Quinns Service Center in Crab Orchard. The store will receive a $10,000 retailer sales bonus for selling the ticket.

The twin sisters received roughly $342,500 each after taxes were withheld.

West Virginia had three separate tickets match-5 numbers in last Saturday’s Powerball drawing, that is the most ever for the state in a single Powerball draw. One of those lucky players also paid the extra $1 for the Powerplay option so their prize amount increases to $2 million.

West Virginia has been on an amazing lucky streak in terms of producing $1 million or more winners from Multi-State Lottery (MUSL) games this year. Counting this weekend’s three winners and a still unclaimed $1 million Powerball ticket that was sold for the February 12th drawing in Wheeling, West Virginia has had 10 tickets from the MUSL games of Powerball and Mega Millions sold and/or claimed this year. This doubles the previous record of five that was set in each of the last two years.

Saturday’s Powerball numbers were 05-15-16-46-49 with a Powerball number of 26 and the PowerPlay: x4

Tuesday’s Mega Millions jackpot is now $92 million and Wednesday’s Powerball jackpot is an estimated $70 million.

The West Virginia Lottery has already been contacted by the other two winners from Saturday night. One will be introduced at 3 p.m. today and the other at 2 p.m. on Tuesday.