Man involved in trashing hotel has violent past

Three floors of a hotel were flooded Tuesday night after a fight between a couple celebrating their first anniversary led to the man damaging the hotel room’s sprinklers. The Pheasant Hill Inn, 12415 E. Mission Ave., had just completed six months of renovations, the general manager told police. He said repairs would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a news release from the Spokane Valley Police Department. KHQ reported that the hotel recently spent $2 million on renovations, including carpet, furniture and artwork. Only 28 of the hotel’s 104 rooms are now usable, with big summer weekends, including Hoopfest and Coeur d’Alene’s Ironman race, coming up. Danial Peters, 38, and Danielle Wozniak, 27, were booked into Spokane County jail on suspicion of felony malicious mischief following the incident, which began Tuesday night and stretched into Wednesday morning. The couple was apparently staying at the hotel when they had an argument. After that, Peters broke off two fire sprinklers inside the room and damaged almost all of the furniture and appliances, police said. Peters has a violent criminal history in Spokane. He was convicted of second-degree murder after he pleaded guilty to the murder of Melissa Wageman in 1995 in the basement of a house near the corner of Division and Glass. Peters admitted to repeatedly bludgeoning Wageman over the head with a 4-foot-long pipe in a drug-infused haze. He met Wageman at the Happy Time Tavern, where she had been celebrating her 40th birthday before accompanying Peters to the house. Peters had been staying in the house with the owner, Robert Katke, who told police that Peters forced him to help clean the blood off the basement walls. Peters then used Katke’s truck to take Wageman’s body to a friend’s house in Stevens County. Upon arrival, the friend handed Peters a phone so he could turn himself in. Initially, Peters said he did not recall the murder, though he woke up next to Wageman’s body. He told police that he and Wageman had been smoking crack cocaine and marijuana when he killed her.