A STAY at one of the Peninsula’s most stunning venues turned violent last week, when a Concord man attempted to strangle his wife on the deck of a Highlands Inn guest room, according to the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office.

And he might have succeeded, had a neighboring guest not dialed 911, Monterey County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Burns said Wednesday. “It’s a good thing the neighbor called,” he said. “I was glad to see that.”

The fight occurred around 7:30 p.m. Dec. 27, when 51-year-old Timothy Whicher and his wife, only identified by police as Jane Doe, were in their guest room at the Hyatt Carmel Highlands. For reasons Burns didn’t know, Whicher became angry and the couple started fighting, and the woman tried to flee, due to the 5-foot-11-inch, 240-pound man’s “intoxication and anger.”

In her summary of the incident, deputy Kathy Palazzolo reported Whicher, “grabbed her on the deck and covered her mouth and nose with his hand, preventing her from breathing.”

“He told her he was going to kill her,” Palazzolo said.

The woman, who was not intoxicated, struggled to break free, at one point biting Whicher’s hand in an attempt to get away, and he knocked her to the ground, according to Palazzolo. The woman then “begged him to think of their daughters and thought she was going to die.”

Hearing the noise and voices, a guest in the room next door asked what was happening, and while Whicher insisted everything was fine, his wife yelled for help, Palazzolo reported, so the neighbor dialed 911.

That call prompted police and medical response, though Burns said the woman declined medical attention at the time.

“It does not look like there were significant injuries,” he said, and the woman returned home to Concord. Whicher, meanwhile, remained in jail this week on charges of attempted murder, spousal abuse and making terrorist threats. Burns said he did not talk to deputies about the allegations.