By David Eck
Enquirer contributor

Amy Rezos and her son David, 6, in their Liberty Township home Tuesday. Her estranged husband, Christopher Rezos, has been charged with twice trying to kill her. The Enquirer/GLENN HARTONG

LIBERTY TWP. - Amy Rezos still has trouble seeing, but the woman who twice survived near-fatal attacks said she is alive because she never stopped focusing on her two sons.

Rezos, 35, gripped the hand of her 6-year-old son, David, Tuesday at their home, as she recounted her July 26 shooting.

Authorities have charged her husband, Christopher Rezos, 35, with hiding in her van and twice shooting her in the back of the head as she drove to work. The couple was in the process of getting a divorce.

"I have two kids who need me," she said in her first public comments Tuesday. "I'm just trying to get (better) so I can be there for my kids."

At the time of the shooting, Christopher Rezos was out of jail on bond on an earlier attempted murder charge in connection with a July 2 attack on Amy Rezos.

In that case, authorities charged him with beating his wife in a West Chester hotel room. Authorities have said that he also tried to suffocate her with a pillow and tried to drown her in the bathtub.

Rezos fought to stay alive after both attacks, she said, because of her boys: David and her younger son, Michael, 2.

"They were the most important thing, my kids," she said. "My kids were the whole support."

Surgery to repair the damage done by the bullets has left her with a metal plate in her skull, she said. She continues to have trouble seeing out of her left eye. She wears a neck brace and will for at least three months as broken vertebrae heal.

The medication that she takes restricts her from driving or being alone.

But she remains optimistic and continues to improve.

"You get to a point where you can't give up," she said. "I'm going to make the best of it and move on. There are a lot of guardian angels watching over me right now."

Though she and Christopher Rezos - high school sweethearts who dated through college and married in 1997 - were planning to divorce, she said her husband did not physically abuse her during their marriage.

"I never, ever, ever thought he would do something like that," she said.

Christopher Rezos remains jailed in Butler County in lieu of $1 million bond. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

"I have to watch them grow," she said of her sons. "They have a lot of life to go through and I want to see it."

E-mail deck@fuse.net