There's a lottery winner in Tarboro. Or at least they bought their winning Powerball ticket at Thorne Drugs in Tarboro.

Clerk Sharon Jones said the store's employees had "been trying to dig" up the lottery winner all day Thursday.

She said no one in the store knows when the ticket was bought, but that Thorne Drugs received a call from a lottery spokeswoman after 9:30 a.m. Thursday confirming their store had sold a winner. Asked if she thought the call was a prank, Jones said it was not, because lottery personnel call a store when it has a confirmed winning ticket.

A big payoff awaits an Edgecombe County resident, or perhaps an area visitor. That person's "rich and don't even know it," Jones said.

"Someone's out there floatin' with $40,000."