LEXINGTON, N.C. — A promise is a promise! Scott Edwards of Julian and Perry Charles of Lexington kept their word to each other.
The friends of 35 years made a pact a long time ago - they would split any big lottery wins with each other. Well, it happened!
Charles won the $361,527 Fast Play jackpot on Tuesday.
“I’d just gotten off of work,” Charles recalled. “I looked at the amount you could win and thought to myself, ‘Man, I want this!’”
Charles chose to wait until he got home to see if he’d won. When he saw that he had, he called Edwards to tell him the news.
“I was lost for words,” said Edwards. “I was kind of in shock too because to me that’s a lot of money to win. And I know that anything he says is just the truth. So, I knew when he told me that he wasn’t pulling my leg.”
Edwards knows his friend well and knew he'd be true to their pact.
"He’s what you call a true friend,” he said. “Kinda like family.”
The two met while working at Winn-Dixie.
“He was my boss!” Edwards laughed.
Charles added, “We always talked about if we would hit something big, it didn’t matter if we went in together to get the ticket or if we got it separate, we were gonna share it with each other.”
Charles bought his winning $5 Double Win ticket from the Mast Food Mart on Old U.S. 64 East in Lexington. When he bought his ticket, the Fast Play jackpot stood at a record $723,054. A $5 ticket receives 50 percent of the jackpot amount. The odds of winning a Fast Play jackpot are 1 in 320,000.
After taxes, the friends each took home just over $128,000 each. Both said they were looking forward to paying some bills.
