Jovita Moore, a well known and respected Atlanta news anchor, died overnight, losing her battle against an aggressive form of brain cancer, WSB-TV announced on Friday (Oct. 29). Moore, a mother of two children and a stepdaughter, was 53. She had worked at the station since 1998 and joined the main anchor desk there in 2012. In April, doctors diagnosed Moore with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of cancer that can occur in the brain or spinal cord. This particular kind of cancer can be difficult to treat, and curing it is often impossible, according to the Mayo Clinic.

She was open about the diagnosis and talked about it in July on WSB-TV in order for her story to benefit others. “This journey for me started with an unusual headache so if something’s not right with you, I urge you to please get yourself checked,” she said in an audio message aired on WSB-TV. Moore called Atlanta home but was born in New York and earned a Master’s of Science Degree in Broadcast Journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Before joining WSB, Moore worked at WMC-TV in Memphis, as well as stations in Fayetteville and Fort Smith, Ark. During her time at WSB-TV, she earned several Emmy Awards and in 2017 the National Academy of Television Arts Sciences Southeast Chapter inducted her into its Silver Circle, one of the organization’s highest honors.

Moore was also an active member of the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists. She is survived by her three children and her mother. “Jovita was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” Craig Lucie, who worked with her as a WSB anchor from 2011 to 2019, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I have never been on the news desk with someone who could handle a breaking news situation as well as Jovita Moore could. If something broke in southwest Atlanta, she knew what street it was on, what the neighborhood was like.” Moore’s co-anchor Justin Farmer came on the air on WSB-TV at 9:48 Friday morning to break the news to the Atlanta-area audience that had come to love her. “There is no making sense of a tragic death such as this,” he said. “The pain is going to stay for a while. We pray for her children.”