Two plainclothes police officers were left wounded last night after a shootout with a 21-year-old man in East Harlem ended with the suspect plunging from a 14th-story apartment window.

According to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the housing police officers – who were not seriously wounded – observed the suspect, Terrell Harris, running across Madison Avenue at 134th Street from the direction of Fifth Avenue at approximately 2:53 p.m., holding a 9mm semiautomatic weapon in either hand.

A witness at 2199 Fifth Ave. called authorities and reported having heard three gunshots at 135th and Fifth, just before the police officers encountered Harris, who, after the incident, was listed in critical condition at St. Luke’s Hospital with a fractured skull and scapula.

Sergeant Patrick O’Boyle, 42, and his partner, identified in Associated Press reports as 32-year-old Erik Hansen, both working in Police Service Area 5’s anticrime unit, were patrolling Madison Avenue next to the Lincoln Houses, a public-housing complex with nearly 3,100 residents under the jurisdiction of the New York City Housing Authority.

Police said Harris ran across Madison Avenue in the direction of the Lincoln Houses, with the officers pursuing him.

A two-block chase turned into a shootout as Harris fired at least 13 rounds at the officers, who returned fire. Sergeant O’Boyle sustained “shrapnel-like injuries” to his scalp, pelvis, and leg, while a bullet grazed Officer Hansen’s ankle, and no bystanders were injured, Mr. Kelly said.

According to the police, despite Officer Hansen’s ankle wound, he continued to chase Harris until they reached the stoop of 1980 Park Ave., one of the Lincoln Houses apartment buildings. There, the suspect surrendered and dropped his weapons, only to turn around and run up the building’s stairs. Officer Hansen pursued Harris but lost him on the third floor.

Minutes later, Harris was observed by housing officers on nearby buildings’ roofs, tumbling out of the window of an otherwise empty apartment on the 14th floor, onto a grassy area alongside the building, where he was arrested and taken to St. Luke’s Hospital.

An official source told The New York Sun that the apartment belongs to an aunt of Harris.

The events happened in rapid-fire fashion. Mr. Kelly said only 12 minutes had elapsed between the time of the first call and Harris’s plunge from the window.

It was unclear last night whether Harris jumped in an attempt to escape the police officer or to commit suicide.

The police commissioner, who spoke with Sergeant O’Boyle at Harlem Hospital before holding a press conference there, said both police officers were listed in good condition and are expected to recover fully from their injuries.

Sergeant O’Boyle, a 10-year veteran of the department, has received 21 medals and made 240 arrests, Mr. Kelly said. Officer Hansen has been with the department for six years and has made 380 arrests.

The officers’ performance yesterday “sums up police work – at any moment you can be involved in a threatening situation,” Mr. Kelly said. “The officers are extremely lucky.”

Harris, who the commissioner said has been arrested multiple times for assault, robbery, and attempted murder, is on parole until 2010.

He had been treated Sunday at Harlem Hospital for a gunshot graze wound to his head, the police commissioner said.

“Harris said he was doing chin-ups outside when he was shot from behind,” Mr. Kelly said.

Police were trying to determine last night whether Harris’s sortie into the streets of East Harlem yesterday afternoon with two weapons in hand was an attempt to seek retribution for the wound he sustained three days earlier.

According to Mr. Kelly, no additional information regarding Sunday’s shooting was available to the authorities last night.

Police have recorded 2,501 crimes in the city’s public housing this year, down 14.9% from the same period in 2004, according to the department’s Compstat reporting system.

In the 25th Precinct housing projects, where the Lincoln Houses are located, however, 14 crimes were reported in the past month, up from six in the same period last year.