New Haven Independent

Chen (pictured at top), who’s 19, delivers quesadillas and fajitas by pedal power for the family restaurant on Elm Street between Orange and State. At least he did. He left the red bike in the restaurant overnight on Wednesday. Thursday morning, it was gone.

In between that time, someone took a stone — probably from a pile next door being used to construct a front patio — and crafted a three-dimensional sculpture of suspended shattered glass out of the restaurant’s front window.

Modern art probably wasn’t the stone-hurler’s aim (although it was an intriguing display, with bent sheets of infinite but still tenuously connected shards and precious little glass on the floor or sidewalk). Chen’s bike was gone. And only the bike. The cash register remained.

Officer Paul Kenney, surveying the wreckage, surmised that it was an “act of desperation.” Click on the play arrow to watch Kenney check out the damage and explain the lack of glass on the ground.

Li Chen, 20, said the family hasn’t encountered this kind of problem before in the four years since it opened the restaurant. The family came to the U.S. from Fujian Province, China, in 1995.