A Chester teen recruited his football star friend to help him kill a rival. Now, he’s charged with his friend’s death.

After his friend was gunned down over a botched marijuana deal last summer, Jesse Allen Jr. was out for revenge, prosecutors said.

“Everybody gone pay,” the 18-year-old said, according to text messages recovered from his cell phone.

Allen plotted an ambush targeting Tyjohn Walker-Jones, the teen charged with killing his friend Sabrie “Breezy” Pierce on June 9, prosecutors say. And to help, they said, Allen recruited Zaheem Sabree, a star football player at Chester High School and an honor student at STEM Academy.

But the plan went awry and erupted into a broad-daylight shootout in which Sabree was killed. And now Allen is facing a murder charge for orchestrating the foiled plot and setting in motion the gunfire that led to the 17-year-old football player’s death.

“There was a shootout, and the causation of that was Jesse Allen’s desire, for weeks, to kill Tyjohn Walker-Jones, and Zaheem was killed in the process,” Assistant District Attorney Matt Krouse said in a Delaware County courtroom this week. “It doesn’t matter whose bullet struck him.”

Allen’s attorney, Michael Malloy, disputed that theory of the crime and questioned why his client was charged in the case. Walker-Jones alone was responsible for Sabree’s death, he said, since he fired the shot that killed the teen.

“It’s because of Tyjohn that [Sabree] is dead, not my client,” Malloy said. “But we have to blame someone, and they’ve chosen my client.”

Prosecutors have charged Allen with murder, conspiracy, and related crimes under the legal theory of transferred intent, saying he is responsible for Sabree’s death because he planned and took part in the ambush. Walker-Jones has not been charged in the crime.

District Judge Wendell Davis ruled Monday that Krouse and his team had presented sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to trial on all charges.

Sabree’s death last summer saddened Chester High’s school and football community and led to an outpouring of support from his teachers and teammates, who wore his number on their helmets as a tribute to him.

On June 30, police responding to reports of the shooting found Sabree suffering from a gunshot wound to the head outside an abandoned fast-food restaurant on 24th Street in Chester. He was later pronounced dead at Crozer-Chester Medical Center.

Surveillance footage from a nearby deli recorded Allen and Sabree walking together down 24th Street, then hiding nearby — Allen in shrubbery and Sabree behind a concrete wall. Moments later, Walker-Jones is seen on the video walking through the area and then ducking behind a parked car as the gunfire rang out, prosecutors said.

Shell casings found at the scene showed that Walker-Jones and Sabree shot at each other multiple times — Sabree with a .45-caliber pistol and Walker-Jones with a 9mm, prosecutors said. Walker-Jones and Allen then fled in opposite directions.

In text messages later recovered by police, Allen told friends his gun had jammed and he was unable to fire at Walker-Jones. An unfired .22-caliber bullet was found at the scene, in the area where Allen was seen hiding on the video.

Weeks before Sabree was killed, investigators said, Allen had posted videos on Instagram posing with a .22-caliber Glock and saying he wanted to trade it for a better weapon.

Texts from Allen’s cell phone, read in court, showed that he bristled over rumors circulating through the city that he had left Sabree to die, saying the teen was his “right hand man.” He also said he would refuse to speak with detectives investigating Sabree’s death, because doing so would implicate him in the unsuccessful plot to kill Walker-Jones.

Weeks after the shooting, Walker-Jones was charged with murder, robbery, and related crimes in the death of Pierce, the teen whose killing prosecutors say led Allen to plan the attack that targeted Walker-Jones and killed Sabree. That case is pending in county court.

Allen is expected to be arraigned there in April in connection with Sabree’s death.