Post Copy Editor Killed in Kayaking Accident

"He was my hero. He made my heart expand, and to think he lost his life today just . . . kills me," the brother said.

Steve Seeber, a kayaker who also had skied and mountain-biked with Mullen, described him as an experienced paddler who "ended up in the wrong place in the wrong position, which can happen pretty much anywhere."

Alkire said that spot was particularly treacherous and that the part of the river has two steep waterfalls. Swimming is banned there and kayakers must sign a release form to enter, he said.

"It's a once- or twice-a-year thing there," he said of drownings in that location. "There is a lot of undertow, a lot of eddies, a lot of overhanging rocks underneath the water."

Alkire said that after going over the 10-foot waterfall, Mullen was pinned underwater for several minutes before going over a second, higher waterfall.

"You get under something like that and the current is holding you down," Alkire said. "It won't let you out until it's ready to let you out."

Mullen had worked full time as a copy editor at the Post since 2000 and part time since 1993. In a note yesterday to staff members, Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, described Mullen as "a respected editor" who was "very popular with his colleagues. . . . He will be sorely missed in the newsroom and by readers who shared his devotion to white water."

Friends and family members emphasized that Mullen was no daredevil and that he had a healthy respect for the river. Just last month, in a column, he recalled deciding against kayaking a dangerous-looking river in Colorado.

Still, the water called to him. In a column three years ago, he wrote of "my first look, and plunge, into a roaring hydraulic named Calamity," in a river in West Virginia.

"As I drifted, picking up speed and getting hit by cross-angling waves, I felt what I later realized was the sensation I had when as a boy I jumped a chain-link fence and climbed to the peak of a mammoth water tower, hanging from the outside on a straight-drop metal ladder, to get a night-time glimpse of faraway Boston. It was a hyperfocus energized by pulsing fear, but still you wanted more."