Man charged with drunken lawn mowing

NORTH POLE, Alaska, June 25 (UPI) -- An Alaska man has been charged with going for a drunken joyride on a riding lawnmower.

Wayne Lewis, 20, was arrested early Sunday morning by state troopers, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Police had received a call from a woman near Fairbanks.

"I was woken at about 1 in the morning by hearing a lawn mower outside my window," said Anne Sterle of North Pole, Alaska. "And it scared the heck out of me, because my husband was out of town. The first thing that went through my mind was someone was stealing our mower. And then I thought, wait a minute, we don't have a riding mower."

Sterle watched from a window as Lewis got caught on some decorative rocks, staggered off the mower and freed it. When police came, he had moved on to the next property.

Megan Peters, a police spokeswoman, said that the trooper who responded followed Lewis using his lights and siren and sometimes hit speeds of 5 miles per hour. She said the officer "was too embarrassed to call it a pursuit over the airwaves."