Webb City man spins up $179,000 Missouri Lottery prize

Kevin Turner, Webb City, had to find a new job after a May tornado, but now his luck has changed. Submitted photo.

Kevin Turner decided it was time to make his own luck. It's been a rough year for the Webb City man, who had to change jobs after the Joplin tornado wiped out his former business. So Turner bought a book about winning the lottery and used a system to generate the winning ticket for the $179,000 Show Me Cash jackpot on Oct. 5.

"It's unreal," said Turner. "I'm still trying to believe it really happened."

Turner, 45, drives a truck for a living. He took a new job after the trucking company he worked for relocated its warehouse to Springfield. He was in the Shreveport area when he learned he had won.

"My buddy gets those text messages from the Lottery site that shows the numbers, and he sent it to me," recalled Turner. "I said, 'Are you messing with me? Are those the real numbers? Because if you're messing with me, I'm not talking to you anymore.' "I thought I only hit four out of five. I forgot I played that last ticket, which I almost didn't play. I was crying and everything else, the total emotional package," he said with a laugh. "I couldn't talk."

Turner had purchased six tickets for the Oct. 4 drawing. He matched four out of five on five tickets, and all of the winning numbers on the last one.

"You pick your numbers and put them in a wheel, and it generates combinations for you. It hit like crazy that day. But I plan on hitting again," he explained.

Turner bought his winning ticket at Take-A-Break, 417 S. Main St., in Webb City.

A close friend of Turner and his wife, Tracy, had a dream that the couple won the Lottery. She didn't share the news until she learned of their good fortune, because she knew they "were going through a hard time."

"What went through my head is that someone answered our prayers," Turner said. "But we told her to keep having those dreams!"

The Turners plan to use the windfall to become financially independent.

"We're going to pay all of our debt off, refinance the house, and stop living week to week," he said. "We're not going into debt again." The winning numbers in the Oct. 5 Show Me Cash drawing were: 5, 6, 14, 15 and 27. Take-A-Break will receive a bonus equal to 1 percent of the jackpot amount for selling the winning ticket.

Now that he's won a Show Me Cash jackpot, Turner said he was going to work on winning Powerball.

"Keep playing. Don't give up," he said. "You never know when it's your lucky day."