Man found dead with winning lottery ticket in pocket

A Michigan man was found dead after an apparent boating accident - with a winning lottery ticket tucked inside his pocket.

Gregory Jarvis, 57, who won the $45,000 jackpot a week and a half ago, was discovered when his body washed up on a beach in Caseville, along the Saginaw Bay, on Friday.

Jarvis had attempted to cash his ticket before his death but was turned away after he didn’t have a Social Security card that was in “good shape,” ABC12 reported.

A Social Security card and a photo identification are required for winnings over $600 in the state of Michigan, according to the Michigan Lottery Commission.

He was awaiting a new card to arrive in the post, but he was already dead before it had arrived.

On September 13, Jarvis had been at the Blue Water Inn and won the jackpot when he played the Club Keno add-on game “The Jack.”

A few days later on September 19, Jarvis returned to the Inn where he bought rounds of drinks, but had yet to cash his winnings.

“Very nice guy, he was here everyday,” said Blue Water Inn owner, Dawn Talaski.

Jarvis had planned to use the money to go and visit his family.

“He was planning to take that money and go see his sister and his dad in North Carolina,” Talaski added.

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

After leaving the Inn that night, it was the last time anyone is believed to have seen Jarvis.

Talaski knew something was “wrong” when Jarvis didn’t return to the bar.

“Sometimes he’s up north working, he wasn’t here all week and we thought, something is wrong,” she says.

This concern was only raised further when Jarvis’ boss stopped by the bar the following Wednesday saying Greg had not shown up for work.

In a tragic turn of events, the police received a call on Friday morning from someone walking along a private beach in Caseville saying a body had washed ashore near a boat - it turned out to be Jarvis and his boat.

“We are thinking that he was tying up his boat, slipped and fell, hit his head, and that’s where he ended up in the water, no foul play suspected,” said Caseville Police Chief Kyle Romzek.

Jarvis’s head injuries were consistent with hitting his head on the boat causing him to drown, according to the autopsy.

Of course, with the winning lottery ticket being found in his pocket when his body was discovered, the police department had to do some further investigations.

“It did, at first, we were concerned about it but after the autopsy, and we interviewed people at the bar, he was well-liked around here, he was nice guy, that took it off the table,” said Romzek of the lottery ticket.

The winning ticket has now been given to Jarvis’s relatives.