Darlene Smith was at her home on Edinburgh Drive in Northwest Roanoke cooking Thanksgiving dinner for her family early Thursday afternoon when she heard the gunshots. Five of them, she said.

Roanoke police said that the shooting in the 2600 block of Edinburgh Drive injured a male, who was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Police Sgt. J.C. Bolling declined to release the victim's name, age or condition or whether anyone had been arrested.

As soon as she heard the shots, Smith rushed outside to find that the shots had come from her niece's house, at Edinburgh and Grandview Avenue.

Smith and others in the area said the victim was a teenage boy who was spending Thanksgiving at the house. Witnesses said he was sitting with some friends in a red Buick Park Avenue with specialty wheels when at least one car drove up and someone started shooting. The victim was shot twice in the lower back, Smith said, and appeared conscious as he was taken to the hospital. The assailants drove off in the Buick, they said.

"We had a drive-by," Smith said, adding that it was the first time she could remember a shooting in her neighborhood.

But what really infuriated her, she said, was that the shooting happened as children were playing outside, enjoying the warm weather. One of those children was her daughter, who came home after the shooting, she said.

"It's wild," she said. "I mean come on, it's too many kids around here. You could have hit any one of those kids."

Most of the children had gone back indoors an hour or so after the shooting. Police had surrounded the area with yellow tape and searched the ground.

A car sat at the intersection, unlocked and with its lights on. Neighbors said it belonged to the victim's mother, who had gone to the hospital with her son.