LOS ANGELES: The tense search for two missing Special Olympics competitors ended well, but it was unclear what happened to the two while they were gone.

A teenage table tennis player from Ivory Coast was found sleeping on a lawn near Los Angeles on Monday afternoon.

Earlier, a 44-year-old Albanian bowler missing since Saturday showed up at a Northern California police station 350 miles away.

This undated photo provided by the Los Angeles Police Department shows a missing person's poster for Andi Gusmari. — AP

Sihon Ange Ismael Kone, 15, was in Inglewood about five miles from Los Angeles International Airport. The autistic boy apparently left his nation's delegation as they prepared to return home around dawn.

The French-speaking teen was tired, but healthy and in good spirits and was reunited with a member of his delegation who stayed behind after he went missing, Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Dennis Kato said.

There were indications Kone had run away, possibly because he didn't want to return home, though Kato didn't elaborate and said it wasn't clear what path he took to the city that neighbors Los Angeles.

Some 6,500 athletes from around the world took part in the Special Olympics, which wrapped up Sunday in an emotional closing ceremony at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the centerpiece of the 1932 and 1984 Olympics.

Before the games ended, Andi Gusmari got separated from the Albanian team at the University of Southern California and was discovered missing Saturday night.

His story ended happily when he walked into the Hayward Police Department around 2am Monday and used a lobby phone to contact a dispatcher, acting Lt. Guy Jakub said.

In this still image from a surveillance video provided by Los Angeles Airport Police, shows a French-speaking Special Olympics athlete who has gone missing. — AP

Gusmari, who had identification with him, but police were not able to communicate very well with him because of a speech disability, Jakub said.

He apparently took a bus north, said Jeff Carr, chief operating officer of the Special Olympics World Games Organizing Committee. “We are delighted that Andi is safe,” Carr said in a statement.

The disappearances of Kone and Gusmari are not the first to occur during a Special Olympics competition. Three athletes and a coach from Niger went missing from the Special Olympics games in Ireland in 2003.

Two Moroccan athletes and two Dominican Republic athletes disappeared from the games in the Raleigh-Durham area in 1999.

Delegations are required to come with a ratio of one coach to four athletes, and the coaches are responsible for managing their participants, Carr said.

Rich Perelman, a spokesman for the LA 2015 games, said it is not unusual for someone to get lost or even defect during any large international event, particularly in a Western country.

He also noted that in the case of both Kone and Gusmari, the athletes were in the direct care of their delegation when they went missing.

“We wish everything went smoothly and no one did anything out of the ordinary,” Perelman said. “But this is real life.”