KITCHENER — A teen who admitted shooting drug dealer Andrew Freake in 2007 testified Thursday that he brought and used his own gun.

The 18-year-old was testifying at the trial of Yousanthan Youvarajah who is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Freake in a North Dumfries Township park in October, 2007.

Last fall, the teen pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was given a seven-year sentence. Because he was 16 at the time of the shooting, he cannot be named.

Freake, 19, was shot in the chest on Oct. 11, 2007, after meeting Youvarajah and three friends to sell them marijuana in Clyde Park, east of Cambridge.

In his opening statement Wednesday, prosecutor Michael Townsend told jurors that Youvarajah used the teenager, who was easily influenced, to shoot Freake.

Townsend accused Youvarajah of supplying the gun and directing the shooting to get back at Freake for shortchanging him in a cocaine deal about a week earlier.

But the teen testified he brought the gun that night and pulled it out of his pants’ pocket.

“Were you given the gun by anyone?” Townsend asked him.

“I wasn’t given the gun,” he said.

He said he got it in a break-in he committed “a long time ago.” Asked why he brought the gun that night, he said he always had it with him “for protection.”

The teen was an obviously reluctant witness whose answers were barely audible. In answer to many of Townsend’s questions, he said he didn’t recall.

Townsend presented him with the agreed statement of facts used at his guilty plea. He asked the teen if he signed it.

“I never signed anything,” he said.

When the prosecutor showed him the signature, he agreed it was his, but said he didn’t recall writing it. His signature confirmed he had read, understood and agreed with the facts.

The teen said he thought he saw Youvarajah the day of the killing. It might have been at lunch. He then said he couldn’t recall where he saw him.

Townsend let him read the agreed statement of facts again, and he said he’d seen Youvarajah “in his car or something.”

Later in the day, he recalled getting in the front passenger seat of an SUV with Youvarajah and others. The SUV ended up “in the middle of nowhere,” he said.

Freake and another man approached the driver’s side door. Freake was there to sell marijuana, he said.

One of the men started talking loudly, saying something like, “You’ve already seen too much weed,” the teen said.

Someone else said, “‘This doesn’t look good.’ That’s when I reached for the gun. I just reached over and fired through the window.”

Asked why he shot Freake, he said, “Just the way he was talking … getting angry and angrier.”

“That’s the reason you shot him?” Townsend asked. “I guess,” the teen said.

The next thing he recalled was waking up the next day at home, he said. His friends must have driven him home. None of them ever asked him about the shooting.

He said he threw the gun in the Grand River, but didn’t know exactly where. Pressed by Townsend, he said it was by the bridge in downtown Cambridge. He never gave the gun to Youvarajah, he said.

Asked if Youvarajah had a gun the night of the killing, the teen said, “I don’t know.”

The trial is scheduled to last for four weeks in Superior Court in Kitchener.