Winning lottery ticket spent two weeks forgotten on seat of truck

May 28 (UPI) -- A North Carolina man said a forgotten lottery ticket sat untouched on the seat of his truck for two weeks before he found out it was a nearly $500,000 winner.

Albert Belk told North Carolina Education Lottery officials he bought a Cash 5 ticket for the April 30 drawing and put it on the seat of his truck, where it was forgotten while he remained at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Belk said it wasn't until two weeks later, when he made a trip to the Hop In & Out store in Lexington to buy a Mega Millions ticket, that he noticed the forgotten Cash 5 ticket still on the seat of his vehicle.

He took the ticket into the store, where he scanned it on the machine and discovered it was a $468,052 jackpot winner.

"I was thinking, 'This is great,'" Belk recalled. "Real exciting."

Belk, who claimed his prize Tuesday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh, said some of the money will go toward buying his wife a 2018 Cadillac CT6 and doing some home improvement projects. He said the rest will go into savings.