RALEIGH - Four people who investigators say came to the defense of a female friend Thursday night have been charged with killing a man who had fought with her.

Anthony Wayne Watson, 26; Ralphiel Montrail Hunter, 27; Christine Nicole January, 22; and Jessica Ann Dixon, 22, all of 910 E. Martin St., are charged with first-degree murder in the death of Ulice Graham, 63, of Fayetteville.

A Wake County magistrate said investigators think that Graham was visiting a different woman at the Raleigh address Thursday night when the two got into a fight. The woman, who has not been charged and whom police did not name, called her two female roommates, January and Dixon, who came to the home.

Those women then called their boyfriends, Watson and Hunter.

Graham was found shot outside a vacant house a few blocks away on Lincoln Court.

About 11 p.m. Thursday, Dawn Perry and her husband, who live on Lincoln Court, heard a car pull in the driveway of the vacant rental house next door. Perry said they heard men's voices.

"Hold up, hold up, hold up," one voice said. "Wait a minute."

A car door opened, and a man appeared to get shoved out, according to Perry.

"Then we heard a shot," she said.

She called 911, and after police arrived, she and her husband went outside. A man lay on the ground, bleeding from a wound near his head. He appeared to have been shot on the right side of his neck, Perry said.

He was several feet away from a Mitsubishi that had been pulled to the back of the driveway. No one was in the car.

The man was well dressed, Perry said, and was holding a cell phone. He was alive when rescue workers arrived, she said.

"When they turned him over, his pockets were turned out," she said. The magistrate confirmed that Graham had been robbed.

Graham was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Ebony Graham, Ulice Graham's daughter, who also lives in Fayetteville, said Friday the family was not sure what he was doing in Raleigh.

Ulice Graham was raised in Eastwood, near Southern Pines, and was retired from the Army, having served in Vietnam.

He was a self-taught golfer, his daughter said.

"He made himself seem like Tiger Woods," she said.

He was an active member of a number of community groups, including the Masons and the Optimists, and he still belonged to the church he grew up attending in Eastwood, St. Matthews Chapel.

'Always a leader'

"He was always a leader, never a follower. He followed his heart," Graham said of her father. "His mission in life was to help people."

Just recently, Graham said, her father had decided to help her and a sister start a home-based business. They had not yet gotten it off the ground, but with his passing, Ebony Graham said, "I'm almost obligated to [it] at this point."

Graham also is survived by his wife, Eula, and son, Curtis.

(Staff researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.)