CHICAGO — Daniel Parmenter and Lauren Debrauwere had been dating for only two months when they sat side-by-side in the front row of an ocean science class at Northern Illinois University on Valentine’s Day.

On their first date, he had brought her a rose, and Thursday he was planning to give her a silver necklace.

But he never got the chance. When Steven Kazmierczak entered the hall and began emptying a shotgun and three pistols into the crowd, the couple dropped to the floor, and Dan began praying aloud. Parmenter tried to protect Debrauwere, both families said.

“He covered her up,” said Mark Debrauwere, Lauren’s father.

“This kid was enormous, he’s like 6-foot-5. He was like a refrigerator.”

Debrauwere suffered serious injuries but survived the brutal attack. Parmenter did not: He was shot twice in the head, twice in the back and once in the side and was pronounced dead at Kishwaukee Community Hospital later that day, said his stepfather, Bob Greer.

Debrauwere, a 19-year-old sophomore from Hoffman Estates, Ill., suffered gunshot wounds to the hip and abdomen, but she was out of intensive care Tuesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, her father said. One bullet lodged in her upper chest, and it will stay there.

As his daughter struggled with her injuries those first hours after the shooting, her first concern was for her boyfriend. She was unable to talk at first because of a tube in her throat, her family said, but she would write, “Dan?”

The family didn’t know how to answer. Mark Debrauwere and his ex-wife, Mary, didn’t want to upset their daughter and set back her recovery.

“For a day or so, we told her, ‘He’s all right,’” her father said.

Finally, after consulting with a hospital social worker, the parents decided it was better to hear it from them than on TV. They broke the terrible news Saturday.

It didn’t come as a surprise. “She said she knew he was dead,” her father said.

On Monday, Brittany Debrauwere told her sister she was going to a visitation for Parmenter.

“She got very emotional,” Brittany said. “She said he was trying to protect her.”

Though they lived only about 15 miles apart as high school students — he at York Community High in Elmhurst; she at Barrington High — the two met at the DeKalb school about 60 miles from Chicago. They had known each other for about a year before dating.