Man thought he was asleep when he saw his huge jackpot win. ‘Like I was dreaming’

A Virginia man’s jackpot win was so shocking that he thought he was in a dream, lottery officials said.

While stopping at a 7-Eleven in Sterling, Jorge Lopez Carabantes decided to pick up a lottery ticket to participate in a Nov. 21 drawing, according to a Dec. 6 Virginia Lottery news release.

But instead of putting in his own numbers, lottery officials said, Carabantes let the computer pick his numbers at random.

Then, when it came time to check if he had won anything in the drawing, he was in for a big surprise.

He matched all five of the winning numbers for the drawing, which put his jackpot at more than $310,000.

“It’s like I was dreaming!” he said in the release. “We still cannot believe this is real!”

Carabantes plans to use some of his winnings to pay off bills

Sterling is about 30 miles northwest of downtown Washington, D.C.

This story was originally published December 6, 2023 at 3:12 PM with the headline "Man thought he was asleep when he saw his huge jackpot win. ‘Like I was dreaming’."

Makiya Seminera

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Makiya Seminera is a national real-time reporter for McClatchy News. She graduated from the University of Florida in May 2023. She previously was a politics reporting intern at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and The State in Columbia, South Carolina. She also served as editor-in-chief of UF’s student-run newspaper The Independent Florida Alligator in 2022.