It was a warm night, and a watchful adult was outside, sitting on a step with her baby. Otherwise, 6-year-old Aaliyah Griffin never would have been allowed to play outside her Feltonville rowhouse.

Two doors down, Gina Marie Rosario, 7, begged her mother to play with the new neighbor girl. Aaliyah had a jump rope, and Gina wanted to teach her a game.

And then, before anyone could react, a silver Pontiac streaked down Third Street. It plowed into the four and came to rest wedged between a house and a utility pole.

"There was no time to scream," said Abby Aponte, who saw the appalling Wednesday night scene unfold. "It happened too fast."

The two girls and the baby, Remedy Smith, who would have been a year old today, were pronounced dead shortly after the 7:30 crash. The baby's mother, Latoya Smith, 22, died at Albert Einstein Medical Center yesterday morning.

A day after the crash, jagged splinters still jutted from the pole the Pontiac had struck. The steps where the bigger girls had played were shattered and askew, with flecks of blood and grease apparent. A memorial grew on the sidewalk: teddy bears, lit candles with holy pictures stuck in them, a Phillie Phanatic, a Barney doll, messages scrawled to those lost.

Her hands shaking, Sandra Elias, Gina's grandmother, stood among the swell of relatives, friends, and strangers who gathered at the memorial. Just before the accident, Gina and her mother, Elias' daughter Tammy Rosario, were ready to take a walk to a pharmacy to pick up medicine. But Gina had seen Aaliyah, and she coaxed her mother into waiting just a little longer so she could play.

Suddenly, there was a screech of tires and a crash, and Gina was underneath the car. Rosario saw it all, and Elias rushed outside when she heard the noise.

"My daughter and I tried to lift the car, but we couldn't," said Elias, who has lived on the block for 14 years.

Rosario scrambled under the car to try to rescue her daughter, Elias said, but neighbors began shouting at Elias and Steven Agudelo, Rosario's boyfriend, to extract Rosario, who is deaf.

"The car was spilling gasoline," Elias said. "I had to get my daughter out."

Inside Elias' house, Rosario, still with shards of glass in her feet from the wreckage, keened and wept, rocking back and forth with a photo of her daughter in her arms. Elias went to the doorway and took the framed picture from her.

"That's my Gina," Elias said, showing a photo of a little girl with brown hair and a wide smile. "So beautiful."

Gina, she said, was a sweet girl and a dancer who liked to jump rope and play with her cousin. She was a student at the Willard School, and she adored the High School Musical movies.

A mere two doors down, Vanessa Boyer remembered Aaliyah, her petite granddaughter, as "my angel," a proud big sister to two siblings.

Inquisitive and happy, "Pooka," as the family called her, loved saying the alphabet and couldn't wait to ride the bus to school next fall as a first grader. She was quiet around strangers but talked up a storm around her family, especially the younger ones.

"She would rock them when they cried," Boyer said. "She would get their bottles, make faces at them to make them laugh."

Aaliyah lived at Boyer's house with her mother, Boyer's daughter Kaillalah Griffin. Latoya Smith, the sister of Kaillalah Griffin's boyfriend, Theo Canada, lived there, too, with her baby. The family moved in six months ago from Frankford and Victoria Streets.

Relatives said that Wednesday night, Aaliyah asked for a dollar to buy some candy for them. She came back with Blow Pops for everyone, and wanted to sit out front to eat hers.

Normally, Aaliyah wouldn't be allowed out front, Boyer said, because the street is too dangerous. Nearby shootouts and robberies made Boyer think it might be time to move to a quieter neighborhood.