Powerball jackpot draws large crowds across country

A $550 million jackpot brought droves of hopeful lottery players to convenience stores across the country.

Officials said brisk sales drove up the record Powerball jackpot, which jumped to $500 million on Tuesday and was raised again Wednesday
morning to $550 million.

The winning numbers drawn Wednesday evening were 5-23-16-22-29 with a
Powerball of 6.

A winner taking the cash option would get $360.2 million before taxes.

In Bloomington, the Village Pantry at the intersection of East Third Street and South Jordan Avenue had big crowds of customers trying for the right Powerball numbers.

“There was a mind-numbing number of people today,” said Chris Canapa, a Village Pantry customer service representative.

“I thought we were breaking the fire code with all the people in here — about a dozen crowding around the register buying one or two tickets at a time.”

Canapa said exactly 247 lottery tickets, including the Powerball tickets, were sold at the Third and Jordan location.

Powerball officials said Wednesday that they believe there is a 75 percent chance that the winning combination of numbers would be drawn Wednesday night.

According to the Powerball website, the odds of winning the $550 million prize were 1 in 175,223,510.

— Amelia Chong and MCT Campus