Police Find 8-Year-Old Girl’s Body; Murder Suspect Held : Crime: Police say Nicole Parker was found dead in apartment of 22-year-old who lives near father.

Police Sunday night found the body of a missing 8-year-old Woodland Hills girl in the apartment of a man who was arrested earlier in the day in connection with her disappearance and killing.

Los Angeles Police Lt. George Rock said officers found Nicole Parker’s body in Hooman Askahcapana’s apartment, which is in the same Ventura Boulevard complex where the girl stayed with her father, about 11 p.m.

Askahcapana, 22, was booked on suspicion of murder, police detectives said.

Rock said Askahcapana, a neighbor of the girl’s father, was arrested initially on suspicion of kidnaping. Rock would not comment further. “I don’t want to jeopardize the prosecution of this case by answering any follow-up questions,” Rock said.

Askahcapana was arrested about 9:30 a.m. Sunday at a home in West Hills after he apparently tried to kill himself, police said.

Rock said that when officers responded to a call about a suicide attempt, Askahcapana told them he had slashed his wrists and taken sleeping pills. Officers later “developed additional information that Askahcapana’s motive for suicide was due to his involvement in the abduction of Nicole Parker,” according to a police news release.

Askahcapana was treated at West Valley Community Hospital and booked at the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center. Police said they could not interview him because he had been using intoxicants.

On Sunday night, friends and family members stood guard at the apartment of Edward Parker, Nicole’s father, refusing to comment about the situation.

Nicole, who lived with her mother in Tarzana, visited her father at the apartment complex on weekends.

Police spent Saturday night combing the area from the Ventura Freeway south to the hills. On Sunday they turned their attention to remote, mountainous areas around Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills, Calabasas and Malibu.

Throughout Sunday, several hundred volunteers scoured San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, shopping malls and businesses for clues to Nicole’s whereabouts. The second-grader disappeared Saturday while playing in the courtyard of the Woodland Hills apartment complex.

She was last seen about 11:30 a.m., bouncing a softball against a wall in the courtyard of View Pointe Apartments, an upscale 800-unit complex on Ventura Boulevard.

“One minute she was there, the next minute I called for her and she was gone,” said the father, Edward Parker, who was doing laundry while the girl played.

Parker said his youngest son, Casey, 9, told detectives he saw Nicole minutes before she disappeared, talking to a man he said was from the apartment where Askahcapana lived. The second man is also under investigation in the case, Rock said.

Friends, neighbors and even strangers circulated about 20,000 flyers picturing the girl, whom friends described as outgoing, warm and friendly. A $40,000 reward had been posted for information on Nicole’s whereabouts, and a prayer service was held Sunday night at Our Lady of Grace Church in Encino, where Nicole attended school.

Actor Beau Bridges, who coached Little League with Nicole’s father and is a family friend of the Parkers, made a plea Sunday for Nicole’s safe return.

The actor’s 7-year-old daughter, Emily, was friends with the missing girl.

“She wants Nicole home,” Bridges said earlier Sunday. “She said for me to help find her and get her home.”

Times staff writer Chip Johnson contributed to this report.