Abduction Suspect Held on Suspicion of Murder : Crime: The Woodland Hills neighbor of the missing girl’s father is arrested after trying to commit suicide, police say.

A 22-year-old man was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder Sunday in connection with the abduction of 8-year-old Nicole Parker, who disappeared from a Woodland Hills apartment complex on Saturday, police said.

Hooman Askahcapana--a neighbor of Nicole’s father who family members said may have been the last person to see Nicole--was arrested about 9:30 a.m. at a residence in West Hills after he tried to kill himself Sunday morning, police said.

Lt. George Rock, a Los Angeles Police Department detective who has been working on the case, said Askahcapana was arrested for kidnaping but later booked for murder.

Police still have not found Nicole, but Detective Dave Steinbacher said investigators have probable cause to believe that the child is dead, and that Askahcapana was involved.

Rock said Askahcapana had not been formally interviewed because he was intoxicated.

“I don’t want to jeopardize the prosecution of this case by answering any follow-up questions,” Rock said.

Sunday night, friends and family members gathered at the apartment of Edward Parker, Nicole’s father, refusing to comment on the situation or say whether the family had been told whether Nicole was alive.

“I know in my heart she’s alive,” her older brother, Travis, had said earlier in the day.

Rock said that when officers responded to a call about the suicide attempt, Askahcapana said he had slashed his wrists and taken sleeping pills.

According to a written statement, officers later “developed additional information that Askahcapana’s motive for suicide was due to his involvement in the abduction of Nicole Parker.”

He was treated at West Valley Community Hospital and later booked at the jail ward at County General Hospital.

Meanwhile, police said they would continue to search for Nicole.

Police, who had spent Saturday night combing the territory from the Ventura Freeway to the Santa Monica Mountains, switched their attention to remote, mountainous areas around Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills, Calabasas and Malibu.

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

Friends, neighbors and even strangers circulated an estimated 20,000 flyers bearing a photograph of the girl, whom friends described as warm and outgoing. Loved ones and friends posted a $40,000 reward for information on Nicole’s whereabouts and held a prayer service Sunday night at Our Lady of Grace Church in Encino, where Nicole goes to school.

Nicole was last seen about 11:30 a.m. Saturday bouncing a softball against the wall in the courtyard of View Pointe Apartments, an upscale, 800-unit complex in the 20500 block of Ventura Boulevard.

“One minute she was there, the next minute I called for her and she was gone,” said Nicole’s father, Edward Parker, who was doing laundry while the girl played. “Nicole is just the sweetest, prettiest little girl you’d ever want to meet. She wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

Parker said his youngest son, Casey, told detectives he saw Nicole minutes before she disappeared, talking to a man from the apartment where Askahcapana lived. Along with another man and a woman, Askahcapana had been seen coming and going regularly from an apartment across the courtyard from Parker.

The second man is also under investigation in the case, Rock said.

“Apparently, they were the last people to talk to my daughter,” Parker said, referring to the residents of that apartment, whom he said he does not know.

Witnesses Sunday said police forcibly entered Apartment 122 in the complex, where they said Askahcapana lived, about 11 a.m. It remained sealed off by police tape throughout the day.

Police have also requested a search warrant for Apartment 122, said LAPD Sgt. Roger Ferguson.

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

“We just all need to band together here and do what we can to bring this young lady back to her family,” Bridges said.

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

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

Nicole’s mother, Lori Parker, who is separated from Edward Parker and lives in Tarzana, said she was baffled by the disappearance.

“She’s just not that type of girl who would run away,” Parker said. “If anything, she’s clingy.”

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

After searching into the night Saturday, police maintained a command post Sunday at the sprawling complex so residents could pass along tips to detectives.

Residents of the complex, many of whom joined the search for the girl, said the disappearance worried them too.

“Nicole is a very friendly little girl,” said Jane Redd, who lives a few doors down from Nicole’s father. “That’s why we’re afraid that if somebody abducted her, they knew her.”

Meanwhile, amid hugs and tears, family friends gathered throughout the day near the apartment complex in the parking lot of Taft High School to distribute flyers describing Nicole.

Among them was Elaine Scully, an administrator at Our Lady of Grace.

“Nicole is the most precious little girl, she is outgoing and friendly,” Scully said. “So what I am feeling is anger--I’m angry with our society that we can allow this evil to exist among us.”

Times staff writer Chip Johnson contributed to this report.