VIRGINIA BEACH — Eleven of them were civil servants, the kind of people who worked on construction projects and water quality and right of way issues. Another was a local contractor who had come by to talk about a permit.

Between them, they had more than 150 years of experience helping to make Virginia’s largest city work — the unelected, behind-the-scenes figures who drew up plans, issued permits and performed the vital jobs that help keep a community intact. And on Friday, their lives ended with a man’s barrage of bullets in a three-floor rampage that once again pushed the nation’s death toll from mass shootings higher.

“Today, we all grieve,” David L. Hansen, the Virginia Beach city manager, said on Saturday. “I have worked with most of them for many years. We want you to know who they were, so in the days and weeks to come, you will learn what they meant to all of us.”

He then began a grim, halting roll call of the dead, their jobs and their lengths of service. He started with LaQuita Brown, and he ended with Herbert Snelling, the contractor. It lasted nearly three minutes.