A man gunned down Saturday afternoon in Northwest Roanoke was a former star basketball player at William Fleming High School.

Former coaches described James Granville Stokes, who graduated from Fleming in 1996, as an incredibly talented basketball player.

"He just excelled at all facets of the game," said Marshall Ashford, the school's assistant varsity basketball coach. Ashford coached Stokes his senior year and described him as one of the best players to come through Fleming.

"He was one of the top five players in the state of Virginia his senior year," Ashford said. "He could do anything he wanted to do."

Stokes, 29, of Roanoke was shot in front of Afton Gardens apartments in the 700 block of Hunt Avenue shortly before 2 p.m. Saturday, according to police spokeswoman Aisha Johnson. A bullet fired during the shooting broke the kitchen window of a nearby apartment and nearly hit a resident.

Stokes was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made, and the incident is under investigation, Johnson said.

It is the fifth homicide in Roanoke this year.

The 6-foot-5-inch player was named to The Associated Press' Group AAA boys' basketball first team in March 1996.

He played forward and averaged 18.4 points and 11.5 rebounds for the Colonels, according to a March 1996 article in The Roanoke Times.

He was also the team's captain his senior year, and Ashford recalled how fellow players respected him.

"When he spoke, people listened," Ashford said.

Stokes was recruited by universities his senior year but never let the attention get to him, Ashford said. He described the player as a quiet, laid-back and personable youth.

He believed Stokes had what it took to play big-time college basketball, he said, and added that the senior didn't qualify academically for admission to a Division I school.

After graduating from Fleming, Stokes went to Allegheny College of Maryland, a two-year public community college, and then transferred to Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina.

Mickey Hardy, currently the head basketball coach at Fleming, coached Stokes from age 12 to 17 when he was on the AAU team. He described long van rides to games in which Stokes would sit in the passenger seat and tell him about his dream of playing high school basketball.

"At that point, he was only 12. And I told him, 'James, you got to work.' And that's what he did, he worked," Hardy said.

Hardy said that even now he tells his players that Stokes stood out for his determination and hard work. He described him as one of two players in his past 16 years of coaching who worked the hardest.

"He loved to play the game of basketball, and he loved life," Hardy said. "He always had a smile about himself."

"It's just unfortunate that he didn't have the opportunity to go on and show the skills that he had," Ashford said. "He never got the chance to display his skills in college like he wanted to."

Stokes had several convictions in his past, including one for misdemeanor assault and battery this year and a felony assault and battery in 1999.

His death "kind of hit us hard, because all the coaches at Fleming loved the kid because he was a good kid," Ashford said.