KITCHENER — A Cambridge man used a teenage friend as a “toy soldier” to shoot and kill a dealer during a payback drug ripoff, a prosecutor alleged Wednesday.

Yousanthan Youvarajah, now 23, is on trial for first first-degree murder in the death of Andrew Freake in a North Dumfries Township park in October 2007.

Freake, 19, was shot in the chest with a handgun after meeting Youvarajah and three friends to sell them marijuana in Clyde Park east of Cambridge.

The teen, just 16 at the time of the slaying, admitted pulling the trigger and was given a seven-year sentence last fall for second-degree murder.

But in his opening address, Crown attorney Michael Townsend said Youvarajah is also guilty of murder because he supplied the gun and directed the shooting after getting short-changed by Freake in a cocaine deal about a week earlier.

“Mr. Youvarajah didn’t pull the trigger, but he pulled the strings to make that murder happen,” he told a jury in Superior Court in Kitchener.

Townsend described Freake, a student at Conestoga College, as a promising athlete and musician who was going through a difficult time in his life after getting into the use and sale of cocaine.

Mutual acquaintances in the drug sub-culture brought him into contact with Youvarajah, who used cocaine and had been seen flashing around a handgun.

Townsend said evidence at the month-long trial will show Youvarajah was angry after he bought cocaine off Freake, weighed it and learned he hadn’t received enough.

“Mr. Youvarajah took that as a blatant sign of disrespect,” he said.

The night of the murder, Townsend said, Youvarajah, the teen and two other friends went to the park in one of their parents’ SUV after arranging to buy marijuana.

Freake met them there with two of his friends after several other locations were rejected as too busy.

He was standing at the driver’s window when he was shot in the chest by the teen from the front passenger seat.

All three of the friends who were with Youvarajah are expected to testify.

Townsend told jurors they will say Youvarajah cleaned the SUV the next day and was seen at a party that night spray-painting a gun — which was never recovered by police.

The teen, he said, was easily influenced and had been told what to do by the older Youvarajah, who was a leader within the group.

“It was Mr. Youvarajah who was calling the shots and making all the decisions,” Townsend said.

A thin, clean-cut man, Youvarajah wore a sweater vest and dark-rimmed glasses in court. He has been in custody since his arrest.