Donald Peters, 79, bought two tickets hours before his death from a heart attack at a grocery shop in Danbury, Connecticut. But after the retired hat factory worker's death his wife, Charlotte, checked through his things and took the slips to the shop to check.

"I'm numb," the 78-year-old said as she handed in the winning ticket, worth the equivalent of £6.9m, at the Connecticut Lottery headquarters. The Peters children think their father would have appreciated the irony.

"He'd be very mad, he just passed away and she won a lot of money," said Brian Peters, one of the couple's three children. "He'd say: 'Figures!'"

Sherlock says "Are we sure that Mrs Peters found the tickets after he died?"

A little thing like being dead didn’t stop the celebrations!

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