A Murray woman is about $110,000 richer, after taxes, after she purchased a winning Powerball ticket from a gas station in Hopkinsville.
According to a news release, Shannon Williams is the winner and she purchased that winning $150,000 ticket at a Max Fuel Express in Hopkinsville on February 23, and that has interesting circumstances behind it.
Williams was on her way back from Tennessee from memorializing her father, who passed away in 2022, and it was his birthday weekend. She was heading to Elkton to Rowdy Acres Farm where she has a young horse being trained—and that horse is the only colt that she and her dad raised together.
She stopped at the Max Fuel to get a drink, and as she was on her way out the door, she had a sudden thought.
“And on the way out the door, because the sun was shining and it was an amazing weekend, I decided to turn around and walk back in and I said: ‘I’m going to play the Powerball because I feel like my dad is with me.’ It was his birthday weekend, and I just had this overwhelming feeling. So, I bought the ticket,” says Williams.
She based her numbers off of a fortune cookie she got while eating with her father before his passing.
With the winnings, Williams plans to build a barn her father would have wanted, a front porch to watch the sunset and make donations to the American Cancer Society and St. Jude Children’s Hospital in memory of her father and her nephew.
Max Fuel Express will receive $1,500 for selling the winning ticket.