An unemployed Long Island man ended three stressful years of hand-to-mouth living when he took home a $1 million Powerball prize yesterday.
Manuel Maldonado, 52, scored a second-prize jackpot for getting five numbers but not the Powerball on one play in the Dec. 14 drawing.
He’s taking an after-tax payment of $661,800.
“It’s been really stressful — striving day after day, trying to stay above water, struggling like anybody would,” said Maldonado, a Central Islip forklift operator and truck driver.
“And the day I found out, it was really a shock. I really never have won anything before in my life.”
The New York Lottery doled out a total of $15 million yesterday to local winners at the Resorts World Aqueduct Casino in Queens.
Another winner was Bronx home-health aide Hanna Mensah-Debrah, who won a $1 million Powerball prize after, she said, her deceased mother appeared in a dream and told her to buy a ticket.Mensah-Debrah played random numbers and took home a lump sum of $623,040.
She’s dreamed of her departed mom before but never the lottery, she said.