Pair almost miss £58m prize after ticket was torn up
A COUPLE nearly missed out on their £58million lottery fortune after a shop worker told them their ticket was unsuccessful and ripped it in two.
Fred and Lesley Higgins had their ticket torn up by mistake after they asked their local shopkeeper in Laurencekirk, Aberdeenshire, to check it.
Mr Higgins, 67, said: “I handed the ticket over and the young man put it through the machine, telling me it wasn’t a winner. He ripped the ticket in two and threw it into the bin, as they would with all non-winning tickets.
“But this time, the terminal produced a chitty that said I needed to retain my ticket and call Camelot. [He] immediately grabbed it out of the bin and handed it to me, not realising it was a winner before he discarded it.
“The ticket had been torn in two but all the numbers were still clear so I took it back home to make the call.”
He was told that because the ticket for the July 10 draw had been torn, the claim would need to be investigated and a security team interviewed him and checked CCTV. But the money has since been paid into their account.