Police have arrested two people and charged them with gunning down a 29-year-old man outside an apartment building in West Raleigh early Monday.

Quamir Alteriq Rogers, 21, and Twanisha Stewart, 27, were charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Markeith Alexander Tennessee. Both are being held at the Wake County jail.

Raleigh police spokesman Jim Sughrue said the crime is being investigated, but investigators do not think it was a random act between strangers.

Tennessee was shot about 12:30 a.m. outside a Raleigh Housing Authority apartment building at 4000 Neeley St., about two blocks west of N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus.

NCSU campus police issued an alert after the shooting that said there were three suspects, described as a black woman wearing red pants and two men wearing red hoodies who fled in a white sports utility vehicle.

A woman who called 911 after the shooting said Tennessee was not moving or breathing.

“He’s outside. He’s on the ground,” said the woman, whose name has not been released. “He’s not talking. He’s not doing nothing.”

Tennessee was a native of Emporia, Va., the youngest of seven children. His sister, Lashonda Tennessee, 37, of Emporia, said someone called her about 2 a.m. to tell her about the shooting.

Lashonda Tennessee, her sister, their mother and the mother of one of Markeith Tennessee’s four children drove to Raleigh and arrived at the apartment building at 4:45 a.m.

Lashonda Tennessee said her brother is a truck driver who had been living in Raleigh the past two years and had recently moved into the apartment at 4000 Neeley St. to live with his girlfriend.

Neighbors at the apartment complex off Kent Road told Lashonda Tennessee that two men and a woman knocked on the apartment door and that when Markeith Tennessee answered, he cried out, “Baby, bring the knife! Bring the knife!”

The two men reportedly struggled with Tennessee in a fistfight before they shot him. Neighbors said Tennessee took off running, but the trio followed.

One of the assailants shot him on a sidewalk in front of another apartment.

Lashonda Tennessee said police would not tell her what happened or allow her to see her brother, whose body lay on the ground for hours as police and officers with the City-County Bureau of Identification collected evidence. Lashonda Tennessee wanted to talk with her brother’s girlfriend, but she said the police had taken her to a precinct for questioning.

Except for traffic violations, Markeith Tennessee does not have a criminal record. He is the father of three sons and a daughter who range in age from 3 to 12, his family said.

Lillian Tennessee, Markeith Tennessee’s aunt, said her nephew drove trucks with his dad for a while before striking out on his own. She said Markeith’s father, Larry Tennessee, was “kind of broken up” by news of the shooting.

“He said he couldn’t go see his son like that,” Lillian Tennessee said by phone from Detroit. “I told him he needed to go.”

City police are asking anyone with information about Tennessee’s shooting to call Raleigh Crime Stoppers at 919-834-4357 or to go to the Crime Stoppers website for instructions on reporting a tip online or by text message.

News researcher Peggy Neal contributed to this report.