Three winners of US draw share €492m jackpot

The largest lottery jackpot in US history — a whopping $656mn (€492m) — will be shared by the buyers of three winning Mega Millions tickets in Illinois, Kansas and Maryland, but their identities remained a mystery, lottery officials said on Saturday.

A pre-dawn call alerted Denise Metzger, manager of a Motomart convenience store, to news from lottery officials that her store had sold a winning ticket in the tiny farming community of Red Bud in southern Illinois, with less than 4,000 residents, about 30 miles south-east of St. Louis.

“I screamed, I woke my husband up,” said Metzger, whose retail outlet will receive $500,000 for selling a winning ticket.