#Couple hits nearly $1M lottery on identical tickets

Winning the lottery is so nice, but this couple did it twice — using identical numbers.

North Carolina husband and wife, Luther and Constance Cannon, were seeing double this week when they won almost $1 million in the the North Carolina Education Lottery jackpot — scoring two six-figure checks.

Luther bought two tickets with the same numbers for Sunday’s Cash 5 drawing — one for him and one for Constance at the Yemen Food Mart in Rocky Mount, NC.

The next day, while out grocery shopping, Luther, a technician at Bridgestone Tires, stopped back at the store to check his tickets. He indeed did a double-take upon receiving a prompt of “go to lottery headquarters.” Then he digested the news: He and Constance won the combined $997,400 jackpot. (The odds of winning a Cash 5 jackpot are 1 in 962,598, according to NC Lottery officials.)

“When he got home, he showed me the ticket and pulled up the winning numbers on his phone,” Constance, a former administrative assistant for the US Army, revealed in a statement. “And when I looked at them, I just started crying.”

The couple claimed their prize Tuesday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh — and split the jackpot of $498,700. They’re netting $352,830 apiece after taxes.

Constance isn’t wasting any time in basking in her good fortune.

“It’s just amazing that we won this amount of money,” she said. “We can pay off our house and pay off our cars and be able to do something for our family.”

Luther shared her positive energy, posting on his Facebook: “Thanking God for another day [and] praying for all my family and friends that we all get the wake up call. Have a blessed day.”

Meanwhile, commenters on the North Carolina lottery site heaped good wishes on the flush couple: “That’s a beautiful thing, I’m happy for them,” said one, while another summed up the couple’s fortuitous fortune: “What luck! He has to be the luckiest man ever to win on both tickets. All I can say is wow!”