A woman who won nearly £27,000,000 in the EuroMillions refused medical help in the weeks before her death, her brother said.
Margaret Loughrey, who was found dead in her bungalow in Northern Ireland aged 56 on Thursday morning, said her jackpot win in November 2013 brought her ‘nothing but grief’.
Paul Loughrey claimed he had minimal contact with his sister over the past six years since she gave £1 million to each of her five siblings.
She spent her last days locked away with her two beloved black Scottish Terrier dogs in Strabane, Co Tyrone, he added.
He told MailOnline: ‘The lottery win done none of us any good, let me tell you. It was too much for Margaret to deal with. I couldn’t have dealt with it. Personally I wouldn’t have wanted it.
‘We don’t know what the cause of death is yet, but she didn’t take her own life. We definitely know that.
‘She was very sick for a couple of weeks, but she refused to go to the doctor and refused to go to the hospital. She was very frail.
‘Margaret was always like a knitting needle. Even when she was a wain (a child), she was always light framed.’
She made a ‘beautiful’ last wish to be cremated and have her ashes turned into a pebble, Paul said. It will be scattered on idyllic Marble Hill beach in County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, where she spent happy childhood holidays.
Margaret was was unemployed and living on benefits when she correctly marked five numbers and two lucky stars to scoop the huge jackpot.
Despite netting £26,863,588 in total, she carried on living in her hometown and insisted at the time that they money was ‘going to be spread around’.
In 2015, Margaret was convicted of assaulting a taxi driver and ordered to do 150 hours of community service.
Three years later she lost an employment tribunal and was ordered to pay £30,000 to an ex-employee for bullying and sacking him on a ‘vindictive whim’.
Speaking to Sunday Life in 2019, Margaret said her lottery win had ‘sent her to hell and back’.
She added: ‘Money has brought me nothing but grief. It has destroyed my life.
‘I have had six years of this. I don’t believe in religion, but if there is a hell, I have been in it. It has been that bad. I went down to five-and-a-half stone.’
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