A US man who won £7.95 million (US$10m) in a lottery almost five years ago has now been sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his girlfriend.
Michael Todd Hill, 54, was convicted of first degree murder after his girlfriend Keonna Graham, 23, was found dead in a hotel with a gunshot wound to the back of her head.
Keonna’s body was found by maid staff in the SureStay Hotel on July 20,2020, WECT reports.
An autopsy report stated she was sleeping prior to the fatal shooting and that a .45 caliber shell casing was located on the bed, according to WECT.
Keonna was found holding a penny in her left hand, the report stated, and detectives found a ziplock bag containing a white powdered substance in the room.
Hill was taken into custody the next day and charged with her murder.
A jury found Hill guilty of the crime and of possession of a firearm on May 27. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on Friday.
Just three years earlier in August 2017, Hill, from North Carolina, won the huge lottery prize from a scratchcard.
In a statement, prosecutors said surveillance footage from the hotel showed Hill was the only person in the room with Keonna.
They said Hill later confessed to shooting her after she had been texting with other men while at the hotel.
The pair had been in a relationship for more than a year, News & Observer reports.
Hill worked at a nuclear plant and lived in Brunswick County at the time of his lottery win.
Lottery wins can be life transforming, but some winners like to keep their life much the same.
The Mirror spoke to Steve Schiltz earlier this month, who hid his millionaire status when he answered the Government’s call for help when a shortage of lorry drivers was cutting off supplies across the country.
Steve, 56, from Pontardawe, Swansea, drove Lidl lorries across Wales and the West Country to help customers stock up during the Covid crisis.
Meanwhile, the neighbour of a lottery winning couple hopes they'll fix a broken fence after they scooped £184million on the Euromillions draw.
