A man managed to lose his winning $1m lottery ticket, then found it in a car park

A man with a lottery ticket worth $1 million nearly missed out on his jackpot after misplacing the ticket in a car park.

Nick Slatten, from Sparta, Tennessee, bought the ticket after work on March 10, and then checked the following day, discovering it was worth more than $1 million.

“I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it,” Mr Slatten said in a statement. “I can’t express it. It was something else.”

After getting the good news, he rushed to his fiancee Michelle’s work to tell her, then proceeded to run errands for the rest of the day, which involved taking his brother to a car part shop.

An hour later, he had the horrible realisation that he couldn’t find the ticket anywhere.

In the Tennesse Lottery, it is suggested that tickets be signed by those who bought it to “prevent someone else from cashing it in, in the event that it is lost or stolen.”

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After thinking where he had been that day, Mr Slatten returned to the car part shop where he went with his brother.

It was there that he spotted his ticket on the ground, unclaimed by anyone else.

“It’s a million-dollar ticket, and someone stepped right over it,” he said.

This ticket is one of five others worth over a million dollars bought in Tennessee this month, according to officials from the lottery.

Mr Slatten intends to use his winnings to live a life with “not a whole of lot of worries” with his fiancee, and plans on buying a house, a car and investing in the future, but to carry on working.