TROUTDALE, Ore. — They stopped in fire lanes, on medians, in spaces so tight one man wedged his sedan between two cars and climbed out of his sun roof. They double-, triple- or quadruple-parked, spilling into driveways and crosswalks, disregarding every traffic law.

The loved ones of the children at Reynolds High School in the Portland, Oregon, suburb of Troutdale knew that a student was shot to death during the second-to-last day of school. And they knew the shooter was dead.

They also knew the 3,000 children who survived would be waiting for them at a grocery store parking lot a mile away.

Details spilled out in fits and starts on Tuesday. The shooting started in a gym detached from the main school building. A 14-year-old boy named Emilio Hoffman was fatally shot in the boys’ locker room. Physical education teacher Todd Rispler also was in the gym and was grazed by a bullet.

But he escaped serious injury and managed to alert school officials of the shooter.

“This is a lockdown,” the school announced over the speaker system, according to junior Andrea Chanocua. “This is not a drill.”

Locked in a classroom, sophomore Dominic Senarsky, 16, said he followed the police response by listening to scanner traffic with a phone app.

“I was scared, because we were listening directly to it, so we knew everything that was going on,” he said.

The shooting broke out as the school day started and students prepared to take final exams. Senarsky was studying for his test in health class when he heard teachers yelling to get into a classroom.

“I didn’t think this was how I was going to end the year,” he said.

Nearby, in the grocery store parking lot, parents waited for three hours or more. Details were frustratingly thin.