LINCOLN — A 15-year-old girl was killed and two other Lincoln High School students were hurt when the car they were riding in crashed into a tree on Wilbur Road yesterday afternoon, the police said.

The dead girl’s identity was being withheld by the police yesterday because they said they had not been able to contact her next of kin, whom neighbors said were out of state on a vacation. She was dead at the scene. The police said she was not the driver.

Deputy Chief Brian Sullivan said at a news conference last night that the victim came from a large, well-known family in the community that he and other officers were personally acquainted with.

“Lincoln is a very small community,” he said. “We’re all feeling it.”

Sullivan, however, would not confirm the victim’s age or sex or that of the two other students involved.

The police said the accident occurred around 2:30 p.m. The car appeared to have been heading east on Wilbur Road, an unlined residential street that runs through the wooded area between Jenckes Hill Road and Old Louisquisett Pike. The car went off the left side of the road, clipping some tree branches before going over a stone wall and striking a large tree at the corner of Longmeadow Road.

The impact shattered a thick trunk-like branch of the tree and the stones of the stone wall by the side of the road showed signs of being scraped.

The front end of the car, a four-door Chevrolet Cavalier, was demolished and its body was bent. The impact was enough to crumple the car’s rear doors. The hood showed signs of fire damage when it was brought into the police station impound lot at about 5:45 p.m.

It is unclear whether the students were coming from the high school, Sullivan said. He did not know where the victim had been seated or if students wore seat belts.

Sullivan would not identify the driver or the other passenger in the car, but said they were both taken to Rhode Island Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The teenage driver was said to be a male.

Counselors will be available to students at the high school today, Sullivan said.