By Associated Press, 04/01/02

PORT BYRON, N.Y. -- Call it a lesson learned: Friends shouldn't let friends drive the lawnmower drunk.

Michael Kocur, 39, admitted in court he was drunk when he was stopped by police on an upstate New York road last July. It is Kocur's fifth drunken-driving conviction.

Kocur, of Port Byron, near Syracuse, told Cayuga County Court Judge Peter E. Corning he drove the mower and towed a friend in an attached wagon as the pair picked up trash along the roadside.

"Which goes to prove," Corning told Kocur, "that no good deed goes unpunished."

Kocur pleaded guilty Thursday to felony drunken driving and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. When the judge asked if Kocur had a driver's license when he was arrested, Kocur answered: "I didn't think I needed one to ride a riding lawn mower."

He will be sentenced May 9.