KITCHENER — Abhishaik Shinde had no idea Andrew Freake was going to be fatally shot the night Shinde drove three men to a Cambridge park to buy marijuana from the drug dealer, he said Wednesday.

Shinde, 22, was testifying at the first-degree murder trial of Yousanthan Youvarajah in Superior Court.

Shinde said he was sitting behind the wheel of an SUV waiting for the drug deal to finish when a dark object suddenly appeared inches from his face and he heard a loud bang.

He was describing the moment a bullet flew by him and hit Freake, who was standing by the driver’s door.

Shinde and three other men were in the parked SUV at Clyde Park in Cambridge on Oct. 11, 2007. Freake and two other men were standing outside the vehicle. Freake, 19, was there to sell them marijuana.

One of the men outside was cursing and had just thrown two bags of marijuana into the back seat of the SUV, he told jurors.

That’s when he heard the bang and saw a “big flash.’’ The dark object he saw so close to his head was a black handgun. It was being held by the man sitting beside Shinde in the passenger seat.

“It was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,’’ he said. He went into shock.

Shinde’s ear hurt so badly that he touched it to see if it was bleeding. It turns out his eardrum had perforated.

The youth in the passenger seat pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last year and was given a youth sentence of seven years. He can’t be named because he was 16 at the time.

He is due for release in September and will be under a form of house arrest while he is supervised in the community.

At the outset of the trial, prosecutor Michael Townsend told jurors he will prove the teen shot Freake at the direction of Youvarajah who gave him the gun. Youvarajah was angry at Freake for short-changing him in two cocaine deals, the Crown said.

But the teen denied this at Youvarajah’s trial, even though he admitted it in an agreed statement of facts he signed at his guilty plea last year.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Talman Rodocker, the teen agreed he didn’t write the statement himself.

He also agreed with Rodocker’s suggestion that the statement included information he didn’t know about and details that were wrong.

The statement’s admission that Youvarajah told him to shoot Freake suggested the murder was planned and deliberate, Rodocker said. Yet the teen’s testimony suggested it was spontaneous, he said.

The teen told jurors he shot Freake because he didn’t like the way he was talking or the angry way he was acting. He had the gun with him because he carried it for protection, he said.

“You’re not suggesting to this jury that the shooting was planned, are you?’’ the lawyer asked him. “No,’’ he said.

He also agreed police told him they wouldn’t ask him for an official confession if he signed the statement of facts. When Rodocker asked if that influenced his decision to plead guilty, he said it did.

Rodocker showed jurors photos of guns police found on the teen’s computer. In one, he posed in a T-shirt showing Al Pacino holding a gun from the movie Scarface.

However, he denied Rodocker’s suggestion that he had fired a gun at someone before the Freake shooting. He specifically denied shooting a man near the Cambridge Centre mall three months earlier.

Shinde, who is studying engineering at Mohawk College, said he met Youvarajah in high school. They “used to be best friends,’’ he said. Youvarajah’s nickname was “Tamil.’’

The night of the murder, he said Youvarajah asked him to drive several men to meet Freake to buy marijuana. Shinde, who often smoked marijuana with Youvarajah and others, didn’t know Freake.

At the park, there was some discussion between the two groups about the quality of the drug and Youvarajah asked to see a sample, he said. Youvarajah was pulling a big wad of bills from his pocket when the gun went off. Shinde had no idea it was going to happen, he said.

As the men fled in the SUV, Shinde said Youvarajah warned them, “‘If anyone says anything, they get f …. d up.’ ’’

The next day, Youvarajah told him Freake had died.

“We’re all going to be responsible,’’ Shinde said Youvarajah commented. Youvarajah called the teen who shot Freake “an idiot.’’

Youvarajah and Shinde searched the internet for information on how to clean the SUV, then went to Canadian Tire to buy supplies. They drove the SUV, which belonged to Shinde’s mother, out to the country and shampooed it.

Shinde said he was initially angry at the teen, but later decided that he was partly responsible for what happened because he drove that night.

He plans to earn a master's degree in engineering.

dwood@therecord.com