The body of a drowned man has been found with a jackpot winning lottery ticket stashed in his wallet.

57-year-old Gregory Jarvis was found washed up on a private beach along Saginaw Bay in Michigan, US, last Friday morning (September 24).

Jarvis had actually tried to claim his Club Keno jackpot prize before his death. He was turned away as his social security card was in bad shape, and drowned before the new card he ordered had arrived.

An autopsy confirmed his cause of death as drowning.

Jarvis had been playing the Club Keno lottery game at Blue Water Inn on September 13 before he won the $45,000 (£33,500) jackpot.

Dawn Talaski, Blue Water Inn's owner, explained: "Somebody said someone just won 'The Jack' and he said 'great', and someone asked him 'was it you?' and it was, so he was super excited.

"[He was a] very nice guy, he was here everyday."

According to Talaski, Jarvis returned to Blue Water Inn on September 19 and was buying everybody rounds of drinks despite not having cashed in the ticket.

"He couldn’t cash it because he didn’t have a social security card at all, it wasn’t any good, so he applied for a new one," she said.

Sadly, that was the last time anyone is believed to have seen Jarvis alive.

Talaski said: "Sometimes he’s up north working, he wasn’t here all week and we thought, something is wrong."

His boss visited the bar on the Wednesday (September 22) and said that he hadn't turned up for work. Police were called on Friday morning when someone spotted a body washed up near to a boat, which happened to be Jarvis'.

Caseville Police Chief Kyle Romzek said: "We are thinking that he was tying up his boat, slipped and fell, hit his head, and that’s where he ended up in the water, no foul play suspected.

"At first, we were concerned about it [the lottery ticket] but after the autopsy, and we interviewed people at the bar, he was well-liked around here, he was nice guy, that took it off the table."

The autopsy revealed that he had injuries consistent with banging his head before drowning.

Talaski said that Jarvis was planning to use the prize to visit his family in North Carolina. His family now have the winning ticket.

For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletter by clicking here.

Source: Read Full Article