A 57-year-old Michigan man was found dead on the shore of a private beach last week with a winning lottery ticket in his wallet, according to reports.
Gregory Jarvis drowned in Saginaw Bay off Lake Huron, WJRT 12 News reported, citing Caseville Police and the results of an autopsy.
A resident discovered the man’s body Friday, nearly two weeks after he hit a $45,000 jackpot in a Club Keno game at the Blue Water Inn in Caseville, the station reported.
But Jarvis was unable to immediately collect his winnings because he didn’t have a viable Social Security card, which the Michigan Lottery Commission requires.
Friends said he died while waiting for a new one to arrive in the mail.
“Very nice guy, he was here every day,” Blue Water Inn owner Dawn Talaski told WJRT.
Jarvis won the money Sept. 13 on a game called “The Jack.”
“Somebody said someone just won ‘The Jack’ and he said, great, and someone asked him was it you, and it was, so he was super excited,” Talaski told the station.
Six days later, on Sept. 19, Jarvis was back at the bar, where he bought rounds of drinks for everyone even though he had not cashed in on the $45,000 ticket, WJRT reported.
It was the last time anyone saw him alive.
“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."
Three days would pass before Jarvis’ boss showed up at the Blue Water Inn looking for him, saying he hadn’t shown at work that week, but no one at the bar had seen him, either.
“Sometimes he’s up north working, he wasn’t here all week and we thought, something is wrong,” Talaski told WJRT.
Then on Friday morning, a beach resident called Caseville police to report a body on the shore, which turned out to be the remains of Jarvis, alongside a 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,” Caseville Police Chief Kyle Romzek said, according to WJRT.
Investigators do not suspect foul play, and an autopsy confirmed Jarvis suffered a head injury before drowning.
The winning ticket is now in the hands of his relatives.
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