Forgot your €350k winning ticket? It could be you

IT could be you! If you bought a quick pick lottery ticket in Drogheda on Wednesday afternoon and left it behind you on the counter, you could be €350,000 better off and not know it.

“I said ‘Don’t forget your ticket’ and when I looked again he was gone,” said shop assistant Tom Heavey, who works in McDonnell’s Centra in Hardmans Gardens on the northside of the Boyne.

He left the ticket beside the till and wrote “Paid for, Tom” on it and thought no more of the incident until “the next morning one of the girls rang me at home and said ‘Tom, you’ve won €350k’ and said ‘Your ticket is here’.”

He was shocked because he had done a quick pick himself. “I knew it wasn’t mine and spoke to my boss about it and we looked at the CCTV footage.”

The lucky winner is a man in his 30s who went into the shop at around 4.45pm and bought a couple of items along with the quick pick.

“He was wearing headphones and I went out after him and saw him walking off towards Pearse Park,” he added.

The route the winner took is used as a short cut to other estates and puts hundreds of houses within a 1 kilometre radius of the shop.

Mr Heavey has been working in the shop for the past 12 years and said he could not have pocketed the ticket himself.

“It wasn’t mine. I could have taken it and no one would have known the difference, but it was someone else’s ticket and someone else’s luck.

“Maybe I’ll get a bit of luck now?!”

The ticket is with the gardaí in Drogheda and anyone who thinks they may have won can contact the shop.