SAN JOSE — Hours before 15-year-old Jayleen Ciriaco died in a street-racing crash, she told her best friend she had a bad feeling inside. Oscar Avila Toledo, 18, who also died in the crash, told friends the same thing.

Bad things happen a lot to their group of teens adrift in San Jose, so their friends didn’t think much of the comments. It’s not unusual for some of them to be kicked out of school or their homes, get into fights, be cited for truancy and joy riding or hauled to juvenile hall for selling drugs or stealing cars.

Just before 11 p.m. Tuesday night, a school night for most kids their age, the bad thing was fatal for three teenagers and critical for a fourth. What started as a joy ride in a stolen car — a 60 mph adrenaline rush down a narrow section of Santa Clara Street, past taquerias and liquor stores east of downtown San Jose — ended in a jumbled wreck near 22nd Street. Stopped by the thick trunk of a tree, the passenger door and roof of the gold Honda Accord sedan smashed into the seats.

Jayleen — who spent more time at her best friend’s house than at her own — and her 15-year-old friend, Anthony Ramos, who failed to return to the county’s William F. James Boys Ranch in Morgan Hill after a weekend furlough, died at the scene. Oscar was pronounced dead at the hospital. Habib “Emmy” Harfouch, 15, remains in critical condition at San Jose Regional Medical Center.

Police haven’t determined who was driving and haven’t found the car they were racing against — a dark-colored Acura that never stopped.

On Wednesday, the teens’ family and friends lit religious candles at the base of the tree, its bark sheared off up to 10 feet high — as though the car hit it while airborne, then slid to the ground. Rubber trim pieces lay in loops. Plastic pieces and a windshield wiper tangled with the ivy.

“I can’t tell you how many of these I’ve seen,” said passer-by James J. Jordan, 75, gesturing to the candle shrine growing amid glinting shards of safety glass. “You wouldn’t believe it. But I was just like them when I was a kid.”

He did stupid things at crazy speeds. But he lived to tell the story.

Not these three kids.

As she often did, Jayleen spent Tuesday evening at the Willow Street home of her best friend, Alex Lopez. Alex was walking her to the bus stop at the Tamien station to catch a ride home when Anthony called, offering her a ride. When he showed up with a couple friends, he asked Alex to join them.

“I’m cool, fool,” Alex told him. “Just take her home.”

Alex knew how things could get dangerous. She, Jayleen and their friends often got into scuffles as they walked to the liquor store on Willow Street for junk food late at night. Gang members sometimes approached, but she and Jayleen just told them, “Hey, we don’t bang. We’re skaters.”

They wore dark cuffed jeans, black Vans and baggy sweaters. Anthony liked to draw graffiti scribbles in his notebook. Last summer, seven girls wrestled Alex to the asphalt and Jayleen came running.

“She protected me, and she could protect herself,” Alex said. “She’s the one that’s always been around me, never left my side. Now after this, I don’t even know.”

Jayleen’s 19-year-old cousin, Jose Macias, said Jayleen spent time in juvenile hall for drug offenses and had been picked up for joy riding in a stolen car. She was even in one or two crashes during races, he said, but wasn’t hurt.

“She always said it was scary,” Macias said of Jayleen’s street racing. But there was excitement to it, too, he said. It’s a thrill he understands. “I’ve seen everything. I know how it is.”

San Jose is steeped in street-racing culture, starting from the cruising days decades ago on Santa Clara Street. But in more recent years, teenagers in their souped up cars tend to meet at the McDonald’s restaurant on McLaughlin and Capitol.

“It’s like ‘Fast and Furious,’ where everyone gathers up,” Macias said. “Everyone brings their fast cars.” They call the Thursday and Sunday night races “The Runs.” “We wait for the leader to say, ‘Let’s go to this place.’ ”

Then they race so fast the steering wheel shakes, he said.

Anthony’s father, Joe Sanchez Ramos, said his son had been in trouble — often for stealing cars — since he was 12. He was set to be released for good behavior from the Boy’s Ranch in five weeks, but refused to return Sunday evening after being let out for the weekend.

“He was trying to have a good time, because he can only come out once in awhile,” said a friend, Erik Hurtado, 16. “Then this happened.”

Carlos Castaneda, 17, who attends San Jose High with the injured boy, said that Emmy “made a lot of bad choices that got him in this mess. People told him to watch out, and not hang out with a bad crowd that did bad things.”

For teenagers living on the edge in San Jose, it’s not always easy to stay away from trouble.

San Jose police Sgt. John Carr said that, try as they might, it’s difficult to keep these kids safe. “Our job is to keep them from killing each other, or an innocent person,” he said.

Most are too young and inexperienced to understand the dynamics of racing a “3,000-pound bullet at 50 to 60 miles per hour,” he said, and what it means to have “all these people’s lives in their hands.”

Oscar, the oldest one in the car, was working and talking about going back to school, his stepmother, Javita Martinez, said.

“We talked about getting on the right path,” she said. “He was a good kid. He really was. He had a lot of respect for me.”

Oscar’s relatives comforted each other at the accident scene Wednesday, and looked through the surrounding ivy, as if looking for an answer. One of them found Oscar’s eye glasses and handed them to his father.

Clutching them in his hands, he knelt to the ground.

Staff writer Robert Salonga contributed to this report. Contact him at rsalonga@mercurynews.com or Mark Gomez at mgomez@mercurynews.com