The trial for the van driver who killed 10 people and injuring 16 on Yonge St. in April 2018 may be delayed for three weeks due to delays in accessing medical records and challenges obtaining information from a laptop and phones.

Alek Minassian briefly appeared in a Toronto courtroom Monday as the Crown and defence requested the judge-alone trial before Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy be delayed until early March so that psychiatric reports on Minassian’s state of mind can be prepared by doctors for both the defence and the Crown.

Molloy said in an earlier court appearance that the case will be on Minassian’s state of mind at the time and not whether he was behind the wheel as he drove the van into pedestrians on the busy North York sidewalk.

Earlier this year, the defence obtained permission from the court to access one of Minassian’s laptops and his phones that were password-protected and which police were unable to access. However, even with the passwords which the defence have, obtaining a report from the devices without the sophisticated software the police have, has been challenging, Minassian’s lawyer Boris Bytensky has told the court.

The delay in obtaining that information and passing it onto the doctors is one reason the trial may not be able to start in February as scheduled, he said.

On Monday, Bytensky said Minassian gave him permission to give police the passwords to the devices so they can prepare their own forensic reports.

Bytensky also said there had been delays in obtaining medical records for Minassian from St. Joseph’s Hospital, which the psychiatrists also need.

Molloy said it was possible to delay the trial start until March, but told the lawyers to come back in early January to have a detailed discussion about scheduling, information-sharing and the length of trial which has been set for six to eight weeks.