An 81-year-old woman from Newport won last month's $336.4 million Powerball jackpot, sleeping with the winning ticket in her Bible until coming forward to claim the sixth-largest U.S. prize on Tuesday, a family representative said.
At a news conference at state lottery headquarters in Cranston, Louise White said little, calling herself "very happy" and "very proud."
Her attorneys said she was a regular lottery player who bought the winning ticket at a Stop & Shop supermarket in Newport where she had stopped for rainbow sherbet. The ticket is being claimed in the name of the Rainbow Sherbet Trust.
White kept the winning ticket in a Bible after she realized she won.
"It was unbelievable," White said in a statement released Tuesday by her attorneys. "None of us can believe it yet. We're excited, very blessed and will determine in the coming months how we'll spend the money but we know we'll always have rainbow sherbet."
White said she wrote down the numbers when they were read on television after the drawing, but missed a few -- so she waited 10 minutes to hear them again. She didn't check her ticket immediately.
When she did, each of the numbers was the same. "Is anybody awake -- I want you to come look at something," she yelled.
Not believing she was the winner, she said, she checked the numbers online. Still the same.
"We still didn't believe it, so we turned off the computer and turned it back on and went back to the website and my numbers were still there," White said in the statement. "We hugged each other and jumped up and down screaming!! ... We hid the ticket in the Bible and went for breakfast on Sunday since we couldn't do anything with it."
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