When Edward Gosselin Jr. of West End checked his morning emails and saw a notification that he won a Powerball prize, he immediately told his wife the good news.

“I was just eating my breakfast when he told me,” said Joan Gosselin, Edward’s wife. “Then the screaming started.”

Gosselin bought the $2 Quick Pick ticket using Online Play on the lottery’s website. It matched numbers on four white balls and the Powerball to win $50,000 in the July 18 drawing. The prize tripled to $150,000 when the 3X Power Play multiplier hit.

“My wife was screaming and we were both just surprised and a little bit in shock,” he said. “She kept saying, ‘We did it, we did it.’”

Gosselin claimed his prize Thursday at lottery headquarters and, after required federal and state tax withholdings, took home $106,516. He said they would celebrate their big win with a vacation to the Midwest.

Saturday’s Powerball drawing offers a $20 million jackpot, or $11.8 million in cash. The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292 million.

Powerball is one of four lottery games in North Carolina where players have the option of buying their tickets at a retail location or with Online Play through the lottery’s website or with the NC Lottery Official Mobile App. The other games are Mega Millions, Lucky For Life, and Carolina Cash 5.

Ticket sales from draw games like Powerball make it possible for the lottery to raise $2.5 million a day on average for education. For details on how $4.8 million raised by the lottery made a difference in Moore County in 2021, visit www.nclottery.com and click on the “Impact” section.