PROVIDENCE — The police gang unit is investigating a drive-by shooting in the West End in which a man wearing a red hat was targeted.

Veasna Ver, 25, of 275 Magnolia St., in the Silver Lake section, was getting into his car outside 175 Wendell St. at about 7:45 p.m. Friday, after having visited friends, when someone in a silver car fired five shots at him, he told the police. Ver was not struck, but the police said his parked car was damaged by bullets.

Officers found five shell casings from a .38-caliber handgun in the vicinity.

Ver told the police that there were four or five men in the silver car and that nobody in the car said anything to him before the shooting began.

Although Ver said he was from Maine and used to be a member of the Original Blood gang in that state, he told Patrolman Yianiss Noel, who initiated the investigation of the incident, that since he moved to Providence he has not been associated with a gang and he has not been involved in a gang-related incident.

But Ver wore a red hat when he was shot at, and Noel reported that wearing that vivid color may have been taken as a provocation by members of a gang whose rivals include a gang that uses red as its emblem color.