For months, the children at the Mis Amiguitos preschool in Manhattan had tended to a bundle of corn stalks growing from a patch of dirt on a busy Upper East Side sidewalk, watching with pride as they grew to over seven feet tall.

Then, one Monday morning last month, the children arrived at the school on York Avenue between East 83rd and 84th Streets to a crime scene: The corn had been uprooted and scattered across the pavement.

The day before, surveillance video showed, a man on a bike had approached the corn stalks in broad daylight, dismounted and ripped them out before pedaling off. The police are investigating, but there have been no arrests and no word on a motive, leaving the school and the neighborhood grappling with a seemingly nonsensical act of vandalism.

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