Outer Banks college student started screaming after $200,000 N.C. Lottery win

Out shopping for dinner, Burak Davrekanli of Hatteras decided to try his luck on two $5 tickets and one of them won him the final $200,000 Mega Bucks top prize.

“I was all the time saying that, ‘One day I will win it. I’m just waiting for that day,’” he said. “It was like a dream.”

Davrekanli, an international student studying liberal arts, purchased his winning $5 ticket from the Food Lion on N.C. 12 in Avon.

“I wasn’t planning to go to Food Lion,” Davrekanli recalled. “And at the last minute I said, ‘Let me go and get a couple things for dinner.’ And then I just got the ticket from the machine and I went back home. For a while I forgot it.”

Later that night, he remembered his tickets and scratched them off.

“I scratched the prize part and the first thing I saw was three 0s,” he recalled. “And I was like, ‘Okay?’ And I kept scratching and there was another 0 and another 0 and then I saw the 2. $200,000. And I just froze.”

When his big win sunk in, Davrekanli started celebrating. “I was alone but I’m pretty sure all of Hatteras Island heard me because I was just screaming!” he recalled, laughing.

Davrekanli claimed his prize Wednesday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh. After required federal and state tax withholdings, he took home $141,501.

“I’m going to use it for my education,” he said. He plans to go into business marketing after graduation.

Davrekanli won the last $200,000 top prize so the lottery will begin steps to end the game.

Ticket sales from scratch-offs make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $725 million per year for education. For details on how lottery funds have helped all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, click on the “Impact” section of the lottery’s website.

This story originally appeared on OBXToday.com. Read More local stories here.

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